Best Settings For Night Photography – In this night photography settings guide, I’ll cover everything you need to know to successfully capture photos after the sun goes down.
I often say that when I photograph at night, I feel like I’m cheating. Bright lights and colors create scenes that are almost always more dramatic than what I walk around in during the day. I don’t have to wait for special lighting.
Best Settings For Night Photography
Cities and other institutions spend a lot of money to illuminate bridges, buildings and other structures that I can photograph. It is almost unfair. Also, photographing at night is not without its challenges.
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That said, if you understand the basics of exposure, then you already know everything you need to know to successfully take night photos.
Before we start talking about how to make your night photos clear, let’s talk about a few settings you need to adjust.
It will allow you to set all the display settings yourself. You can get away with using Aperture Priority mode but avoid automatic settings.
Poor lighting will cause your camera to try to use completely inappropriate settings. You need to take charge of the process.
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I hope this is something you already do. Shooting in RAW is always a good idea, but especially necessary at night.
Nighttime images feature extreme dynamic range, which is the range of tones between pure white and black. Raw files can be much larger than JPG files. Additionally, you’ll be dealing with digital audio at a much higher rate by capturing raw files.
It’s done by your camera meter, of course, but at night it’s a difficult operation and your camera meter can be fooled. Night photography often involves very bright lights in a sea of darkness.
The first and easiest way to measure, which works really well, is to let the meter in your camera try to average all the tones in the scene. This is done by the camera’s “automatic” metering mode.
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This automatic mode is called different things by different manufacturers. For example, Canon calls it evaluative metering mode, Nikon calls it Matrix, and Sony calls it Multi-Segment.
The good news is that this automatic mode will usually work very well. Just center your meter and the result should be great, but if not, just adjust and try it again.
If you want to be more in control of the metering process, then use Spot Metering. In this mode, the camera will only use a small area (usually in the center of the frame) to determine the correct exposure level.
If you use this mode, aim your camera so that the spot is at one of the lights in the image. Once you’ve done that, set your meter to +2, meaning it will be two stops above the surface normal.
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This way the brightest part of your image will remain within the dynamic range of your camera. Also, it will hopefully capture your shadows enough that they will have some detail.
The danger is that the shadow areas are bright enough, but that’s fine if your shadows go to black. It’s supposed to be black, after all, it’s night!
Again, I would start with auto metering mode and let your camera do the work for you. Otherwise, you’ll find that a slight increase often looks better. Once you’ve measured the available light, you’ll be ready to start working on your exposure controls.
San Diego, California. Shutter speed: 8 seconds; Aperture: f/11; ISO 400. I used a smaller aperture here because I had a very close foreground and I still wanted the buildings in the background to be sharp.
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As mentioned above, you’ll be using Manual Mode, so you’ll be setting your Aperture, ISO, and Shutter Speed without the help of the camera.
Where should you put these settings? Obviously, it will depend a bit on your situation, but there is some guidance I can give you to help you get started.
The higher you raise it, the more sensitive it is, but it can also cause digital noise in your photos.
Also, as you’ll see when we talk about the other two controls, the way you set the aperture and shutter speed will give you some flexibility in setting the ISO so you don’t have to set it so high. do it
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It’s high enough to get a good exposure without going overboard on your other controls. But not so loud that it would cause too much digital noise.
You need to use a faster shutter speed to keep the drone moving and you need to keep the ISO low because the cameras are not as fast as your DSLR or mirrorless camera.
On the other hand, you can use the largest aperture available because everything is far away (at an infinite focal plane) and therefore you don’t need depth of field.
As you know, using a small aperture limits the amount of light that is allowed into the camera. But it also gives you a wide depth of field, resulting in an image that is sharp in the background.
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On the other hand, using a larger aperture allows more light to enter the camera, but results in shallower depth of field. So only your subject and its immediate surroundings will be sharp.
Here’s the thing about night photography: if you were shooting, say, landscapes, you don’t need as deep a depth of field as you do. The reason for that is that eventually your background will usually just be black.
That doesn’t mean you have to open it all the way. You don’t want a depth of field that is too shallow.
Use something more on the large (or medium) end, adjusting around f/5.6-8.0. It will give you a decent depth of field, but will also allow a lot of light into the camera. The good news is that this is usually the sharpest point of most lenses too (call it the “Sweet Spot”).
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Washington, DC Shutter speed: 30 seconds; Aperture: f/16; ISO 400. Here, I used the camera’s settings with a smaller aperture to increase the shutter speed and add clarity to the water.
The third and final exposure control setting is shutter speed. This is the length of time the camera opens the shutter to expose the image.
Longer speeds keep the lights on. But the danger in using longer exposures is that if the camera is moved or tilted during the exposure it will result in a blurry image.
Generally, in night photography you will use a tripod. It will keep the camera still, so you can use a longer shutter speed (long exposure).
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As you’ve already set ISO and Aperture, just setting the shutter speed to what your meter says will give you the correct exposure. For the most part, it doesn’t matter what shutter speed you use.
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. Shutter speed: 30 seconds; Aperture: f/20; ISO 200. Again, I used a small aperture to force the long shutter speed into the water. In retrospect, I probably should have lowered the ISO to 100.
Night Photography Equipment: As a handy reference, I’ve compiled a list of night photography gear on Amazon. Tripods, releases, filters, lights and other items for special effects. I receive a small commission from each sale on Amazon, so your purchases help support this site.
You might be thinking “Wait a minute,” all these exposure things are for shooting in cities and urban environments! What is in the village and the night sky?”
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Photographing the night sky is a whole different story, and not really the focus of this article. But here’s the good news: I can already tell you the exact exposure settings you should use when trying to capture the night sky.
Your display settings are always the same because it’s always dark! Every time you want to photograph the night sky, set these settings automatically: Shutter speed: 15 seconds, ISO:6400; Aperture: wide open. You may have to adjust the first two values a bit if the bracket on your lens does not open very wide.
The stars move across the sky, probably much faster than you think. Anything longer than 15 seconds (okay, you can get away with 30 seconds with a heavy wide lens) will produce short star trails that look like specks in the sky.
Because it will be so dark and the starlight so dim, you’ll need to take extreme measures to let in enough light for the camera. It means high ISO. ISO 6400 is about as high as you want to go with modern cameras because there is too much digital noise beyond that. The lack of light also means you’ll have to use a wide-open shutter.
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However, don’t worry about the resulting shallow depth of field, as everything in your shot may be on the same plane.
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