How to adjust the camera when taking portraits at night?

Image source POCO photographer Zhang Wangwang

The night is always deep and beautiful. You took out your camera and tried to capture the beautiful scenery at night, but because of the poor light, the photos were dark and there were no details on your face. So how do you take portraits at night?

The biggest problem of taking pictures at night is the lack of light, so if you want to take portraits at night, you usually need camera hardware assistance. For high-sensitivity large aperture lens, if there is an external flash, use the external flash to turn off the light and reflect the flash to fill the light for the person, increase the exposure of the camera as much as possible, and ensure sufficient shutter speed, so that the image of the person can be solidified when capturing the portrait.

Image source POCO photographer Zhang Wangwang

Therefore, when shooting at night, we mainly consider the normal exposure of foreground people and background. Knowing this will help us quickly master the skills of portrait shooting at night.

Night shooting is mainly divided into:

Simple portrait:

No matter what the surrounding environment is, it is essential to let the picture only show the main body, and the use of flash can ensure a high enough shutter speed. The built-in flash of the camera is unnatural and can be used without high requirements. However, it should be noted that the distance between the flash and people should be moderate, too far will not have an effect, and too close will make people pale (adding a soft light cover in front of the flash can improve this situation). Off-plane flash can take photos from the side, which has the advantage of making people look less dull and dull than the photos taken by overhead flash.

Image source POCO photographer Dada octopus pill

Portrait with environment: This kind of photo can be divided into two situations in the use of equipment.

No flash

This situation requires high equipment and environment. First of all, there must be a lens with a large enough maximum aperture. Generally speaking, at least f 1.8 is required to ensure a safe shutter and improve ISO 400-800. The brightness of ambient light should not be too low. Make full use of the large aperture and the light of street lamps to ensure people's exposure. And choose the background with light, and form a beautiful spot through the blur of large aperture. Such as street lamps, car lamps, large spotlights for buildings, etc. , is the best choice for natural environment light. When shooting with a large aperture, the surrounding light may be shaped like a balloon. If you shoot with a small aperture, the shape of light may shine like a star. At this time, you can choose the size of the aperture according to the shooting intention.

Image source POCO photographer Zhang Wangwang

Use flash

Different from the situation mentioned above, the low-speed shutter is used while using the flash, which can ensure the normal exposure of the characters and bring the environment into the picture. At this time, it is very important to balance the exposure parameters of the environment and the output of the flash. Everyone uses the convenience of digital camera to debug the exposure combination.