Night Photography Tips

In the past it was very difficult to capture good images at night. Film simply wasn’t light sensitive enough to capture high quality images with short exposures. The digital revolution has changed all of this. If you take the time to learn some of the basics of night photography that have been outlined below, you can quickly start capturing stunning images of the night sky with relatively inexpensive equipment.

PLANNING YOUR SHOTS

Planning is not only a great way to capture great images at night but planning always helps in capturing the perfect images anytime because if you If you take the time to plan your shoot according to location and time then you can evaluate a lot of thing and you will almost always get results that are superior to an unplanned shoot.

CAMERA SETTINGS

Using the correct camera settings is very important when shooting at night. With the proper exposure, you can capture remarkable images with minimal noise and maximum detail. However, a simple mistake can cause a photograph to be very noisy or completely out of focus.

Shutter Speed

Determining the proper shutter speed for shots that include the night sky can be tricky. A one-minute exposure will yield better-quality images than a six-second exposure because you are letting more light into the camera and therefore increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. However, during the course of a one-minute exposure the stars will move across the sky and create small star trails in your image. This is not ideal if you are trying to capture stars that appear as round points of light, like you see them with the naked eye.

You need to find a way to get exposures that are as long as possible without producing noticeable star trails. This is where the rule of 500 comes in. With this rule, you take 500 divided by the focal length of your lens to determine the shutter speed. For example, if you are shooting with a 50mm lens, you take 500/50=10. So 10 seconds would be your shutter speed. If you are shooting with a 17mm lens, you take 500/17=29.4. So 30 seconds would be your shutter speed.

Aperture

When taking photos at night, you will generally want to shoot with the widest possible aperture on your lens. The widest aperture is the lowest number aperture, like f2.8 or f1.8. This is very important at night because you need to let in as much light as possible to help minimize noise.

One exception to using the widest possible aperture is if you have an extremely fast lens, like f1.4 or f1.2. Even with the best lenses, the corners of the image can show a lot of softness at these ultra-wide apertures.

ISO

Once you’ve determined your shutter speed and aperture, it’s time to set the ISO. In the majority of cases, you will want to use the highest native ISO on your camera in order to get the best quality images with the least amount of noise. Native ISOs are represented by a number, such as 3200 or 6400. You should avoid using extended ISOs. These ISOs are generally represented by letters such as H1 or H2.

Focusing

The easiest way to get a night shot in focus is to set your camera up during the day and get your focus right before it ever gets dark. However, if you can’t do this or you need to change your focus during the course of the night, there are many ways to do this.

If you don’t have a close foreground object in your shot, you can simply focus at infinity. If there is a moon out, you can do this by using autofocus and simply focusing on the moon. If there is no moon out, you can zoom in on a bright star using Live View on your LCD screen. Then, manually adjust the focus until the star appears as a small, sharp point of light.

After you take a shot, make sure and zoom in all the way on the image on your LCD screen to ensure that everything in your shot is in focus. Sometimes, if the foreground object is too close, it will be impossible to get everything in focus in a single shot using a wide aperture. In this case, you’ll need to use a technique called focus stacking, where you blending multiple shots taken with different focus points.

EQUIPMENT

When shooting at night, it helps to have a newer digital camera that is rated well for low-light ISO performance. It’s also preferable to use a lens with a very wide aperture that can let in a lot of light. You’ll also need a sturdy tripod when shooting at night.

Conclusion

This is really all you need to know to start capturing impressive images at night. These are basic yet some powerful tips and the best tip you can follow is, go out and click some pictures as you’ll learn a lot by yourself as you start to click pictures and learn from your mistakes.
And if you have clicked a bad shot at a moment that can't be captured again then you can outsource the post production work to us (Uretouch Photos) and with our team we can bring life to your pictures.