Tips for shooting at night

[Joanna71985]

Can anyone give me tips for shooting pictures at night? I get a lot of blurry photos, so anything you offer would be greatly appreciated. I have a Kodak EasyShare z650.

 

[ukcatfan]

The number one thing to do is use a tripod. Also, if your camera has manual settings, we can give you some advice on where to set the aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. If not, what sceen modes does it have?

Kevin

 

[Joanna71985]

It does have manuel settings. I'm not too sure what numbers to try though. And for scenes, I have portrait, fireworks, night, night landscape, backlight.

 

[ukcatfan]

Here is what each of those probably does. I am not 100% sure though b/c different models call things different names. Remember that almost all night shots benefit from using a tripod and using a wide angle instead of telephoto. Using a 2 second delay from pressing the shutter to the actual shot helps keep your finger motion from messing up the shot. Most cameras have that feature, but it may only allow something like 10 seconds.

portrait - It has a slower shutter, but proably not enough for night shots

fireworks - It should set the shutter to around 2 secs. a small aperture (~f/8)and a low ISO. It might vary from that.

night - this is probably for night portraits. If it includes a flash, then that is probably right. If so, it has a long shutter speed (at least a second) to capture the background and a flash to capture your subject.

night landscape - this should be a long shutter speed and no flash

backlight - This should be for daytime shots when there is light behind your subject. To properly capture the subject without overexposing everything else, it uses a flash.

To do a manual night portrait, have the camera set for a proper exposure of the background and then tell the camera to use a flash. Do not have the flash turned on while it is metering for a proper exposure of the background. You might want to try testing the settings it gives you in P or Auto mode and then enter that in manual mode and include the flash. You want to focus on the people.

To do a night shot of something not moving, then you can probably just let the camera decide what to do as long as you use a tripod.

To do a night shot of a moving subject without flash, then you have to sacrifice. You either have to increase the ISO, which means more image noise, or use a wide aperture (~f/2.8-3.5 on a p&s), which means less depth of field. You will likely have to do both. You must maintain a fast enough shutter speed to keep the motion from blurring the shot. You might not need a tripod though b/c of the faster shutter.

Kevin

 

[tinksdad]

Tripod for sure! and don't get a cheap one.

Does that camera offer a metering in the manual mode? I assume so.... Set the camera up on the tripod and then in manual set the aperture on about f/5.6 or so, change (decrease) the shutter speed until your camera indicates the frame is metered correctly. Then take the picture.

Another concern on taking long exposures will be the act of depressing the shutter release. This can bounce your camera enough to blur the picture. If you have a timed shutter option, use that for best results.

 

[mabas9395]

It really depends on what you want to take pictures of at night. The tips for pictures of something standing still are different from the ones where your subject is moving.

 

[Joanna71985]

Moving objects- the fireworks and the parade.

 

[seashoreCM]

It all boils down to three things: lens aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. For a typical point and shoot camera the lens aperture will be automatically maxed out for night shots. Usually you can choose ISO but the higher the ISO the more grainy the picture will be. Most likely you will already be maxed out on that too. The only remaining choice is shutter speed which you must make slower (if not automatically made slower) hence the need for a tripod for stationary subjects. With a tripod, you should be able to get the ISO down to 200 or even 100 and improve the picture quality. For moving subjects such as parade floats you just have to pan the camera with the subject and hope for the best. Take more than one shot so you can choose which came out better. For a digital camera you can quickly erase the shots that really looked bad.

Exposure compensation (typically steps on a scale of minus two to plus two) is meant to deliberately make the entire picture a little lighter or a little darker than the camera's automatic settings would do. The purpose is to emphasize a subject. You can make possible a faster shutter speed or a lower ISO at night by making the entire picture darker using exposure compensation. Also darken the entire picture with exposure compensation if the main subject is Christmas lights and their colors got washed out.

Some of the modes like "fireworks" or "night" may include some exposure compensation but the exposure compensation setting itself still works to further lighten or darken the picture.

When you use zoom, the lens aperture maxes out sooner requiring a still higher ISO or still slower shutter speed to get the equivalent night picture.

Digital camera hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/digicam.htm

 

[mabas9395]

It all boils down to one thing. Turn on some lights!

 

[Groucho]

Fireworks are easy, Spectromagic is very, very, very difficult. Read this thread for more info. Some of it is technique but most of it is technology - "basic" cameras are going to have a hard time getting a really decent photo of the parade. You're pretty much stuck having to use the flash, which'll light up a small area and leave everything else in inky blackness.

The reason fireworks are different is because generally, people are trying to get a photo of the fireworks "blurred", leaving trails behind. However, you still want some sort of support system (tripod, etc) to keep anything in the foreground (like the castle) steady.