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| fiveseven808 Wed 26th Apr 2006 12:12
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Hey everyone I was wondering what tips you would reccomend a n00b when taking night shots. My camera doesn't have bulb so unfortunately I can't use that, but I find that my night shots are lacking something... I'm not sure what though...
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| Pueo PRO Thu 27th Apr 2006 21:48
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I suppose it depends on what features your camera has. However whatever "nightshot" you take you'll likely want to have a tripod or something stable to put your camera on because unfortunately human hands are not quite as still as we'd like to think.
Keep in mind that even a consumer level camera (like my sony cybershot dsc-p72) has the ability to open the apperature rather large and keep the shutter open for a reasonably long time (up to two seconds). With that ammount of exposure time, every movement will be recorded as a blur... so in order to get a good clean shot, tripods are best. (Unless of course you want the blurry movement effect on purpose.)
If you're taking pictures of things far away, you'll also want to make sure you don't have your camera flash. Usually the flash is pretty much useless beyond 10 feet anyway.
If, however, you've got a subject (say your Aunt Sally) in the foreground and you'd still like to have the night background (the city lights) show up behind the subject, you'll want to use the "slow flash" mode which holds the shutter open long and flashes just before the shutter closes. This mode allows for the background to show up ok as well has adequately lighting your foreground subject to get their picture.
Interestingly the "Slow flash" mode can also be used to catch the motion of dimly lit subjects (a night-time parade or dancers in a nightclub). The subject's motion will be blurred up until the point where the camera flashes and freezes their motion at that point in time. It's a nice effect that usually captures both energy and motion.
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| ohahhwho Fri 28th Apr 2006 15:57
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I echo what Pueo said, plus, don't give up on an image just because you can't see what you want to see in it. Send me an emial to "ohahhwho@aol.com" and I'll show you what I mean.
Aloha
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| GeoffReeves Fri 5th May 2006 18:14
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These are all great tips.Also one tip you might want to try is if your camera has auto metering but is adjustable.Set it to expose maybe three or four steps over (expose).Sometimes for different reasons the camera can be fooled into underexposing a scene,which is not to our liking.
Also you could try night shots within an hour of the sun going down.There is still a lot of ambient light around.
Not sure if your camera is digital but if it is take plenty of shots in dark/nightime situations,not just to pick the best one although of course you would, but it helps us to begin to understand which works best when adjusting exposures differently to what the camera tells us.
Geoff
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| Lubitel11 Sun 25th Jun 2006 08:16
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If you're using film camera:
take notes of technical details for each shot (shutter, etc); beware of the HIGH contrast beetwen buildings' lights and shadows, and... good luck!
If you're using digital:
take a camera which can shoot up to 30 secs.or slower, take notes too, and beware of that nasty noise at high ISO settings.
In my humble opinion.
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