 I started thinking that maybe there's some viewers out there that haven't tried night photography, so I'll add a few comments. For this time of the year, it's a way to extend your photography. You'll find that some of your previous subjects and scenes will look totally different in the winter landscape at night. I'm not an expert, but for those that haven't tried it maybe I can help a little: pick up a tripod, either a good one or even a cheap one from Walmart. You need to have a camera that allows some manual control, but it doesn't have to be an expensive one. Today's picture was shot with a digicam, although a film or digital SLR gives the ultimate control of the exposure. For your camera settings, it's quite the opposite of common sense. With a dark scene, you tend to think of fast film speed or ASA/ISO setting for digital- but you want to use the lowest film speed that your camera will handle (if your camera has the ASA/ISO set to "automatic" be sure to change this). For the lens setting, I find better results by stopping down the lens to a small aperture, which will give your lights a star-burst look (I like F16 to 22 on my SLRs, but my digicam only allows F8 and the street lamps look pretty good to me). For the white balance on digital cameras, I just leave it on automatic. I like the surprise of colors that you get. I'm not out for the authentic or natural look, so if you are- you'll need to take steps to manually set your WB yourself, but be aware that the different lights have various color temperatures and you can't take away all the green or orange tints, nor would you want to. With my film cameras, I always shot slide film to get that "what you shoot is what you get" effect, rather than worry about what the photoprocessor will do to "correct" the prints. This picture was shot with an 8 second exposure and F8. Exposures vary according to the scene, sometimes going up to 5 to 10 minutes if the scene is pitch black. Remember that there's always light to record, even if your scene looks to be total darkness. Some of the most striking pictures I've seen involve long exposures of very dark areas, with the results being something of a work of art. If your camera gives a lot of noise, download the free Neat Image to clean it up some, but don't let the program take away all the details. And lastly, pay close attention to your composition. You'll find that your attention is glued to proper exposure and the composition will suffer a bit if you don't watch it. The play of light is what your after and tiny details matter. For instance, with this picture I should have move the camera a bit to the right as the street sign would work much better if it was defined by the light reflections on the asphalt. Small adjustments will prevent a second trip out. Happy hunting. Post back to these comments with some examples if this helps to introduce you to night photography. (update: here's a good example of night photography: No Traces and No Traces ) Thanks for viewing. Comment (4) | Permalink |
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