How to set camera parameters for night photography?

Some people still think that it is easy to take good-looking photos only during the day, and it is more likely to take good photos according to their own needs. This method can't be said to be correct, because if you only shoot during the day, you will lose the opportunity to take advantage of the beauty of sunset, evening and night-interesting mysterious moments, full of different shadows from warm lights to cold neon lights.

When shooting at night, you can improve your professionalism-because to get good results, you need to study the fine-tuning of camera, lighting and image color. Despite the difficulties, shooting in the dark can still be your favorite hobby: you can't underestimate the streets and natural beauty. It may look different to you, but your camera has more functions than you think!

Aperture value Before you start to configure the camera for night shooting, please make sure that you have a chance to fix the camera firmly-after all, it is difficult to achieve a short shutter speed in poor light. For many shooting (such as a stadium with lights at night), the camera is enough to hold it tightly in your hand, but in most cases, you need a good stand, which is very suitable for a special tripod. Be sure to be heavy and steady-you can definitely hold a big SLR camera, even if it's not for a few seconds, but for a few minutes. In extreme cases, if you can use a professional tripod, don't use a temporary surface: it can be the roof of a car, the surface of a table or an architectural element.

After you let go, you can continue-set the aperture and ISO (sensitivity), which will help you get the required exposure and get excellent results. When shooting at night, the standard sensitivity of 100 ISO is used, and the aperture is very large-f/16. Since the camera is fixed, you don't have to worry about exposure, even if you want the longest time, but we will discuss this later.

Long-term exposure can produce beautiful blurred night, and many color stripes penetrate into the whole night scene frame, giving it dynamics and significance. The length depends on the speed of passing vehicles and the space area falling into the frame. Anyway, if you are not sure which shutter speed is right for you, please follow a simple rule: the longer the time, the better-the fringe you dream of will be more obvious and will not be interrupted. Usually used in urban environment, choose a value of 20 seconds.

Traffic lights will be excellent assistants for shooting cars in cities: they will signal you when you are worth shooting. Don't forget the tripod.

Capturing the required shutter speed is very simple: to do this, use "Av" mode, and then adjust the aperture value to a sufficiently large aperture-just use the wheel behind the shutter button. Set the value to f/22 to f/32 if the camera function allows. For most cameras in this mode, the shutter speed can reach 30 seconds. If you want to increase this value, you should use the letter "m" to put it in manual mode.

Sensitivity details In night shooting, the sensitivity should be equal to100ISO-this rule should be violated only when it is determined that it can be different. With the increase of sensitivity, the light absorption of the sensor increases-which means that the amount of light falling on the photosensitive sensor must be reduced.

In addition, you should know that the improvement of ISO will bring another problem-the increase of digital noise, which becomes too obvious in the photos. Therefore, you must set the sensitivity to the lowest level to avoid losing the high quality of photos. When shooting in very poor light, many novice photographers think it is necessary to improve the ISO value-this is not the case: just install the camera on a tripod to use it. You can also use a flash.

But it is important to know when to increase the sensitivity, and its ISO value will be a necessary measure. For example, if you need to avoid blurred images, you can do this: it is better to leave a little noise instead of getting a blurred image with poor quality. This skill is needed when the tripod can't be used and the hand will never be still.

If the result still doesn't suit you, please use the flash: the sensitivity can be kept at 100. Indeed, these photos often lose their special charm, become flatter and change the contrast between light and dark.

Digital noise camera is not an ideal tool and is easy to make mistakes. Imperfect digital noise in photography is similar to film shooting. In order to see as clearly as possible, light up the photo. Of course, manufacturers of modern camera models are trying to completely overcome this defect, and the result is obvious: compared with the old models, the noise problem in the latest models is not so worrying for photographers.

Why is there a defect? This is all related to the improvement of sensor sensitivity, in which the "noise" of photos is stronger. If you pay attention to the dark areas of the frame, you will immediately find that they are affected much more seriously than the light. These darkened areas can not only get a rough feeling, but also cover dots of different colors-not to mention high-quality photography. Fortunately, many devices have noise reduction function, which helps to smooth the results. Another option is to work with photos in the editor after "clicking". Just remember to shoot in RAW format.

White Balance and Color Flaws Usually, SLR cameras accurately transmit colors in photos-we will see that they are the same as those in real life, because the internal system for monitoring white balance is specially configured to transmit colors correctly. However, if the automatic white balance mode (called "AWB") is used in low light, the highlighted object is likely to have an incorrect orange-yellow tone, which is absolutely unrealistic. If you find this color in the picture, you can only conclude that the white balance setting is incorrect. Of course, you can use the correction function in the editor, but you can avoid forgetting to shoot in RAW format.

But to avoid making changes in the editor, you can pre-configure everything to make the photos look correct. To this end, it sets the camera to manual "pre" mode-this method is especially useful when taking multiple photos (for example, buildings under constant lighting). For reference, you can specify a photo with a gray or white theme.

Sometimes, when the same building is illuminated by various light sources, the simple manual mode may not be enough: color inaccuracy still exists. It is not difficult to aim at the white balance with one light source, but what about the others? This task is almost impossible-just try to convert such photos into black and white photos. First, shoot the desired landscape in color, and then change it to a monochrome palette in the photo editor. Therefore, you will have the opportunity to adjust the contrast and tone range in as much detail as possible.

Manual white balance adjustment Digital SLR cameras are equipped with a very useful function we mentioned earlier: adjusting the white balance according to the pre-shot standard images. Let's analyze the setup steps you can see on Canon brand cameras-for other cameras, it's much the same.

First of all, it is worth remembering that those photos damaged by orange-yellow tones (which rarely appear) need to be manually adjusted for white balance.

You need to shoot a white or gray subject and illuminate it with the same light as the photo frame you want to shoot. We select the "Custom White Balance" mode (the manual setting is the same), check whether the reference photos are displayed on the screen, and then press "Settings"-"Select".

Now it is time to change the white balance mode: it is automatic ("AWB"), and now it should be manual ("PRE"). On the camera, it will be represented by a square with two triangles near the vertex. Now, you can almost 100% be sure that the camera will transfer colors and shadows correctly.

So in your opinion, the night shooting frame is the work of experienced professional photographers, and novices can't do it. But this is not the case. We can know for sure that it will be very easy to adapt to this condition, mainly by practicing and trying different camera settings.