Every photographer should know these night photography tips. Night photography can be one of the most interesting yet mesmerizing to be seen. But, everyone should have known that night photography is not easy. It is not simple. You can either get an unseen picture because of the dark, or it can be blurry because you can’t get the focus. Especially if your goal is to capture a full moon picture. You need a lot of practice, feel, and some knowledge about how to do it. To fulfil your knowledge in night photography, we have prepared 5 tips for you that can be easily learned.
Essential Night Photography Tips Every Photographer Needs to Learn
Then, what are these 5-night photography tips you need to know? Check these tips below!
1. Know Your Destination and Plan It in Advance
Plan to return at your location before sunset for your setup while also gaining the benefit of taking pictures during magic hour lighting. Consider bringing a digital compass on board for the purpose of recording GPS coordinates and determining orientation in relation to sky.
This may prove valuable when photographing stars trail images. Some websites such as Flickr have search features allowing access with descriptive keywords and even specific GPS coordinates. Scrolling through other photographers results can offer innumerable tips such as photo locations and many more.
2. Ditch Night Mode and Choose Manual Settings
Ditching night mode is a good starting point to take great night photography shots. Many DSLR cameras have night modes that automatically set a long shutter speed and high image stability levels. In order avoid the nocturnal defaults on the a digital camera it may be useful to shoot in manual mode.
In Manual mode you have full control of the exposure levels, which is important for nighttime photography. Most of your photos have a wide aperture in order to let out as much light as possible. In dark spaces increase your ISO and shutter speed. High ISO will produce a rough result on your pictures that will give you creative results if you know how to use it correctly.
3. Increase the ISO.
Shooting at night means there are less of light source, especially a natural light source. This is where the mastery of camera settings come into hand. Camera settings, such as ISO, are really important in night photography. ISO determines the sensitivity of a camera to sunlight.
During the night most night photographs require high ISO. An excellent starting place is 800. Take care of the noise or colours. Others might take better photographs with low ISO settings i.e. fewer than 100 or 200.
Read also: How to Take Sharp Photos in Low Light
4. Use Slow Shutter Speeds
The essential knowledge about night photography is to put your shutter speed on slow speed. This is needed because the camera needs to be able to capture everything in the dark. The darker the place, the slower your shutter speed needs to be set. For starters, you can set it to 10 seconds. But if the place too dark, increase the shutter speed to 30 seconds. Try to throw a couple of test shots to find the best shutter speed for the given area.
You might realized by now that by using slower shutter speed, you are prone to camera shake. So, what should you do?
5. Bring Your Tripod
Now you know that you need to work with longer shutter speed, right? Long, or slow shutter speed means that you will shooting long exposures. It means that you need to be stable as possible while waiting your shutter to be closed.
That is why you need the tripod to keep the camera steady. Once you set the shutter speed on low speed, then once you move just a second, your picture will look awful. You barely can get any object right in the frame. You need a steady tripod (not a human tripod) to hold your camera for at least 30 seconds to get a perfect picture.
6. Choose a Wide Aperture
The last thing you need to know is about the aperture. Aperture size is defined by how much light enters your camera lens. For night photography, we recommend you to use the lens handle for at least f/2.8 or f/4. You can adjust the aperture depending on how dark is it. The darker it is, the wider aperture you need.
Since you have finished correcting all the exposure settings (shutter speed, ISO, and aperture), try to capture some test shots in order to find mistakes and make adjustment from there.
7. Learn To Do Manual Focus
Nighttime is truly a test for every photographer, both amateur and professional. In nighttime, camera will find it hard to focus on object and you need to work on low light.
This is where your skills to do manual focus will be tested. You need to adjust your focus manually in order to capture light and great images. You can also try to shoot in bulb mode, which is really helpful if you are trying to create a light painting.
It can be hard at first. But, make sure to practice manual focus and using bulb mode whenever you can so that you can capture great image.
8. Get a Remote Shutter Release
If you are looking to capture star trails or night sky images, then you have to make sure that your camera is as steady as possible. One small shake can cause light trails to be blurry or even destroying the whole night photos.
Sure, you can adjust your shutter speed to be as fast as possible while cranking the ISO to the max. However, light is very sensitive and your night shots can look bad with fast shutter speed. Either taking street lights, or streaking lights, you will always want to be sure that your camera is safe from shake at any moment.
Having a remote or shutter release cable will really help you in this case. This will eliminate the possibility of shaking your camera when you press the shutter.
Even the smallest hand could cause the camera to shake if you did anything. This remote or a release cable will protect you against unwanted changes to the image. A sturdy tripod or a stable surface will give you the best picture of the night sky. The best way to take a night sky photo is by using a tripod.
Those are some night photography tips that you can apply. Working in nighttime means working with low light, which makes it harder to operate a camera. However, you can always adjust your camera settings: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Working with slow shutter speed can be hard at first. However, you can utilize tripod or release cable to help you avoid camera shake and capture great night image.
Now, you can try to hunt night photography. It is fun to hunt the picture during the night because of the beautiful light in the middle of the dark. A night photo shoot also can be the best session to sharpen your photography skill. But, for additional notes, you may have to do some photo retouching after that.
If you don’t have time to do photo retouching, Dropicts can help you with that. We have professional photo retouching services you can use to make all of the pictures from your photoshoot look good. Contact us to find more information about our services.
