Night Digital Photography
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Without any doubt, night pictures can be more appealing than others.
Old cameras tried their best to provide better night photography. But in real, it was the digital cameras that gave incredible vision, clarity, sharpness and light to the nightlife from the eye of a digital camera.
If done properly and efficiently, night photography can bring really fabulous pictures like sunset or sunrise. This short article will give you some useful tips for night photography using a digital cam.
Pre-requisites:
If you want to take clear night pictures with a suitable depth-of-field, you should have a tripod. You should also make sure that you understand this like exposure, shutter speed, depth-of-field etc.
Useful Tips:
1- Try to use long Exposures:
These are probably the most important factor in successful night photography. A longer exposure means that you are allowing more light to enter the camera which results in higher details of the object being photographed. The shutter speed decides the exposure. Make sure that you don’t shake your camera because it can then result in a poor image - most cameras give you a warning when camera shake is likely to affect your shot and obviously a tripod is useful for minimizing camera shake. Ideally use an infra red device to trigger your shot rather than the old fashioned squeeze type trigger that your parents would have used.
2- Manipulate the aperture:
For long exposures you should choose relatively smaller aperture in order to avoid overexposing. Overexposing may give you unwanted effects of day lighting. Look at the picture below which results from overexposing the object.
By adjusting the aperture and the shutter speed, you can get your desired results. For example, for the object photographed above, if you lower the aperture to adjust the exposure, you can get an image like this:
3- Using Flash:
You should decide whether to use the flash light or not. Some object and surrounding requires flashlight while others don’t. You can only consider the option of bringing addition, bigger flash lights with you.
4- Time:
The best time, in my view, to take night photographs is during dusk because of the fact that the colors and details at dusk are relatively easier to capture.
5- Zoom Method:
Unless you’ve got a rock steady tripod, avoid using optical zoom for night photographs because it usually increases the camera shake
6- Take as many pictures as you can:
This is to compensate for any camera shake that has occurred and will also allow you to choose the best shot without having to spend too much time compensating for different factors in your image editing software.
7- Selecting subjects:
There are several subjects that add value to your photographs taken at night like full moon, bridges, fireworks etc.
8- Auto focus:
Auto focus can be used as a solution of camera shake, although be careful that it doesn’t get confused by the lower light levels and therefore focuses attention in the wrong places
