The moment of perfect harmony:
The modern DSLR has made night photography easier than ever. There are a few tricks you need to know to improve your photos beyond the ordinary. First of all, let's discuss the equipment you will need.
A tripod or some sort of steadying device is mandatory. Night exposures are long and camera blur will occur if the camera is not rock steady. A cable release, while not necessary, is helpful for keeping your images blur-free. The simple act of touching the camera to press the shutter button is enough to add some motion blur to the shot. That said, I will also discuss some alternative work around for dealing with situations where you do not have a cable release or tripod.
Timing is the most important aesthetic element in taking night photos. Photographs look better when there is some detail and color in the sky. The ideal time to take your night shots is 10 to 20 minutes after actual sunset. I call this time slot the "moment of perfect harmony" where the exposure for the sky is perfectly balanced with the exposure of the city lights. At this moment you will be able to record some detail in the sky, which often goes a bluish color. Don't be afraid of taking night photos on cloudy days. The sky will still turn into a nice deep blue background. This is due to reciprocity failure, a topic I will cover in a later post.
Proper exposure is very easy with modern DLSR cameras. For the most part, I find it easiest to put the camera in its "A" for "Aperture Priority" setting. This allows you to select the lens aperture you want and have the camera choose the shutter speed. While almost any aperture will do, f/5.6 or f/8 is often the most optimum optical setting for a lens. You can check your results on the camera display and by looking at the histogram to see if it is balanced. You want the high parts of the histogram graph to be in the middle. But be careful because your histogram can be skewed to one side or the other if there are large dark areas of very bright lights in the scene. Best bet is to bracket your shot. Do this by setting your camera to over expose by plus one stop and under expose by minus one full stop. You can set most DSLR cameras to do this automatically for you, but that might be more trouble than it's worth for the few exposures you are going to take of a scene such as this. My preference is to use the over/under (+/-) exposure button and dial on your camera. With your camera still on the "A" setting, change the +/- setting to +1. Take a photo. Change it again to -1 and take another photo. That should do it, but you could play safe and go for a +2 and -2 also. You should be shooting in RAW because this will provide the most options for adjusting the exposure afterwards. The JPG format will be too limiting if you do need to make exposure corrections on the image later on in post processing.
There are times when you do not have a tripod or cable release with you. To steady the camera you will need to find a firm place to rest it. Then you can prop something under the lens to gain elevation and angle it in the right direction. I usually use my wallet or keys. You can use the camera's self-timer feature instead of a cable release. I usually set the time for a delay of 2 seconds. Press the shutter and remove your hand from the camera and 2 seconds later it will take the exposure. For extreme steadiness I often use a feature most DSLR cameras have to lock up the mirror. When the mirror slaps up and down it causes a vibration that can blur your shot, particularly if you are using one of these emergency techniques for propping up the camera. That is the method I used to take the photo of the Coliseum below.
There are times when you do not have a tripod or cable release with you. To steady the camera you will need to find a firm place to rest it. Then you can prop something under the lens to gain elevation and angle it in the right direction. I usually use my wallet or keys. You can use the camera's self-timer feature instead of a cable release. I usually set the time for a delay of 2 seconds. Press the shutter and remove your hand from the camera and 2 seconds later it will take the exposure. For extreme steadiness I often use a feature most DSLR cameras have to lock up the mirror. When the mirror slaps up and down it causes a vibration that can blur your shot, particularly if you are using one of these emergency techniques for propping up the camera. That is the method I used to take the photo of the Coliseum below.
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