Summary of photography skills to capture aesthetic feeling

Long exposure is one of the techniques used by professional photographers to get vivid photos. By opening the camera shutter for a long time and letting more light enter the camera, photographers can take really amazing photos. If it shows running water or cars driving on the road at night, the photo looks particularly impressive.

Long exposure will record another kind of beauty that we can't capture with the naked eye. For example, taking a night view of a city and taking colorful car lights with long exposure can highlight the theme of this bustling city. What should we pay attention to in such an attractive special photography technique?

Long exposure photography has the following aspects to pay attention to:

Stability comes first.

A tripod is essential, even if there is no tripod, there should be a place where the camera can be placed stably. For example, on the beach, on the steps, on the table and so on.

Try not to touch the camera to complete the shooting process.

Use timed shooting or preferably have a cable release or remote control to further avoid touching the camera. You know, when you press the shutter, it is easy for your hand to make the camera vibrate slightly, and it will always vibrate organically if you press it lightly.

Turn on the mirror pre-lifting function.

If it is a SLR camera, the vibration of the reflector itself will also affect the stability of the fuselage. Turn on the reflector pre-lifting function before shooting. When you press the shutter for the first time, the reflector will be lifted first. When shooting formally, you only need to move quickly to complete the shooting.

Set the sensitivity to the lowest.

The lower the sensitivity, the better the image quality. Moreover, long-term exposure is prone to noise, so it is better to minimize the sensitivity impact that is prone to noise.

Shoot with a small aperture

If there is no special requirement, a small aperture can increase the depth of field and avoid some slight effects.

Wide-angle shooting

The depth of field at the wide-angle end is very large, and you can't see the jitter caused by other inevitable factors (such as cars passing by in the wind).

After reading the main points that need attention, let's talk about how to use long exposure shooting.

Ensure the clarity of the image subject.

Some special photography techniques, such as long exposure, are great challenges for photographers. Although there are many opportunities to take good photos with a hand-held camera and a fast shutter, long exposure at night or dawn will be very charming once it is successful.

According to the experience of many photographers, the best effect of long-term exposure is often not obtained in the dark, but produced in the morning or evening. At this time, the brightness and color temperature of various light sources are different, which forms a very interesting tone. Those unimportant areas are easily submerged by weak light or darkness, while important things are easily revealed. This kind of shooting usually has very strong contrast light, so it is very necessary to choose the correct film, and at the same time, we must ensure the lowest correct exposure setting.

Night photos usually require long exposure, so tripods are usually used. Moreover, compared with the photos using natural and effective light, the static characteristics of night photos will be stronger, and night photos often give people a sense of silence.

When shooting with a hand-held camera, because the light is very weak, use a lens with a relatively large aperture, and use a large aperture as much as possible. If you have a tripod, you'd better expose it for a long time. At this time, you can use a smaller aperture, so you can get a greater depth of field.

You don't need expensive high-speed lenses or expensive high-speed films for long-time exposure, and you don't need complicated post-processing. All you have to do is long exposure, the special exposure function you want or manually adjust the exposure time to a few seconds or even hours.

In the control of long exposure, there are mainly two settings, one is the "B" door and the other is the "T" door.

The "B" door usually needs a cable release to lock the shutter, so that the camera can open the shutter for exposure at any time.

"T" door is more convenient than "B" door. When you need exposure, press the shutter and the camera will expose it. When it is necessary to end the exposure, press the shutter again to end the exposure.

Weak light often causes strong contrast between light and shadow.

The key to night scene shooting is to choose the right time to take pictures. As mentioned above, the effect of taking such photos in the morning and evening is better than that in the dark. The best way to shoot is to set up the camera before dusk, and then wait for the afterglow to change from orange to various shades. Only at this time, the lighting of the set is still sufficient, but the total brightness of the lighting has begun to fade slowly.

At this time, you need to decide the exact exposure time. In general, the working condition of the built-in photometer is not ideal. Compared with the surrounding brightness, exposure techniques that emphasize midtones often pay more attention to highlights, resulting in underexposure of photos.

First of all, the spot metering of shadows will produce white bright spots, which is not what we want to see. The best way is to choose the main area with average brightness for exposure detection, such as the road surface illuminated by street lamps. This suitable exposure value can manually set or start the storage settings.

Some experts think that using gray cards will be of great help to you in this respect. A standard gray card can be recorded in the viewfinder image through macro reading mode. The best way to determine the exposure time is to set a fixed aperture and then find the corresponding exposure. After the exposure time exceeds 1 s, you must pay attention to the possible failure effect. When the shutter speed is extremely slow, a long exposure different from the camera indication value is needed.

Whether to use autofocus depends entirely on personal habits. In effective light photography, if the contrast is high, autofocus will show its advantages. In this case, because the picture observed through the viewfinder is very dark, it can help you to establish the subject quickly and accurately. If the object in front of the camera is still, it is not very meaningful to use the automatic function, but when using long exposure, it is best to focus manually with a tripod.

Flexibility and quality must be coordinated.

Strictly speaking, you can divide these photos into two parts:

When shooting, use large aperture (that is, fast lens, such as f2.8 or 1.8) and fast film, such as ISO400 and above, and shoot with naturally available light.

Real night photos taken with tripod and shutter time 1 sec to several minutes, medium to small aperture and medium speed film can ensure the highest quality.

Many subjects in the effective light are moving objects, which is another reason why long-time exposure photography is difficult. The exposure speed of the camera must be very short, so that the camera will not shake when the shutter is released. The choice of shutter speed depends on the speed of the subject. Because it is difficult to grasp the moving speed of objects at night, it is often difficult to control the imaging effect when shooting at night. The only way is to take more photos with different settings to choose from.

When shooting with a hand-held camera, the shutter speed should be kept as reciprocal as possible with the focal length. For example, if the zoom is set to 125mm, the shutter speed must be set to1125s or faster.

When you use medium-speed or high-speed film, the exposure time can be shorter, but at the same time you will find that you need to use as large an aperture as possible, which will make the depth of field very small. The optical performance of some lenses is not the best. If you need a large depth of field at the same shutter speed, you should use high-speed film.

The following are specific examples of several shooting situations.

lingering light of the setting sun

Shooting the afterglow of the sunset is a shooting occasion that photographers talk about, because the photos taken at this time are often very effective, and the specific operations such as exposure, framing and light control are not very complicated. It seems that pleasant photos can be taken under any circumstances, such as those with outline effect when underexposed-of course, this is not the method that photographers should use, and photographers should control the effect artificially. So how can we show more details in the background of strong light or shadow?

Generally speaking, there are the following methods:

Set the exposure correction to+1~2f level.

Tilt the camera slightly and enter the corresponding value in the exposure memory.

Read the whole area with average brightness.

If color film is used for exposure, the professional printing room can adjust the photos. For example, if you don't like a hue or hue, you can ask the printing factory to make you a new one according to your own requirements.

Slide photographers had better use the step exposure method, with exposure levels of +0.5,+1,+1.5 and +2f respectively. After the film is processed, you can choose the photos with accurate exposure.

Digital photographers can check the results on the LCD at any time and correct the exposure as needed. At the same time, even if you are not satisfied with the picture effect in post-processing, you can still easily use your favorite tone with the help of software. Generally speaking, you often need to change the brightness and contrast of highlights and shadows separately.

Night fireworks

Shooting fireworks is very simple, almost every camera can shoot, as long as the "B" or "T" long exposure setting is the premise. This setting can keep the camera shutter open continuously and record the trajectory of fireworks, thus forming beautiful lines. It is also important to have a tripod and cable release.

Experienced photographers will bring a small flashlight to check the camera settings from the outside. Medium-speed movies (ISO200-400) are the best and easy to shoot. When choosing a lens, you may wish to give priority to the standard or wide-angle lens, and the lens should not be too slow (the maximum light is preferably F2.8).

Because fireworks are often attractive, you must arrive at the shooting location early and choose the best shooting location. Remember, you should choose a place that is not affected by the lighting of buildings or similar objects, otherwise the photos will produce boring light.

Of course, preparation before shooting is very important. You can make all the necessary settings in advance and then load the film. Equipped with a piece of black paper, it is used to cover the lens when the fireworks stop for a short time, so as to prevent excess light from entering the camera and affecting the imaging quality. For the same theme, it is best to take some photos of continuous shooting, which greatly improves the overall effect of the picture.

When setting exposure, even the most complicated and best exposure system can't work normally, because the contrast between bright and dark places is too strong, and the lighting situation becomes very fast. In order to record all the light traces in the film, the shutter needs to be opened continuously for more than a few seconds.

In a word, you should think that the aperture setting has a great influence on the light trace, and the exposure time determines the length and fullness of the light. So I suggest you use medium speed film (ISO200-400), and don't shrink the aperture too small, preferably 4.5 or 5.6. Shutter needs to be opened 10~30 seconds.

When shooting fireworks, you need to take many different photos in succession. Experienced photographers generally know that the best shooting often happens at the end of fireworks, so it is very advantageous to use continuous shooting in this shooting situation.

Through the above teaching and concrete examples, I hope that you can be both dynamic and static under your lens capture.