How to shoot in slow motion

The slow door creates a wonderful night scene.

Summer night, bright lights. Many movie friends will choose to shoot outdoors. Today, I will tell you a few creative shooting methods using the slow door to make your night shooting more interesting.

Beginner's chapter

Long exposure shooting: not simply putting the camera there.

As we all know, a very important factor that determines the effect of a work is the shutter. We can shoot at night with long exposure, but whether it's long exposure or B-door shooting, we don't just put the camera there, but also need a lot of shooting skills.

Long exposure photography of stellar orbits

When shooting a picture with the track of stars, we need to use the B-door of the camera, because other modes of the camera can't support our long exposure, especially the stars, which can't be observed by the naked eye.

First of all, we must have a stable tripod; Secondly, we need to find a foreground object suitable for the picture, because only the objects in the foreground will enrich the picture and make the track more dynamic; We should choose a wide-angle lens with a large aperture to shoot. Don't choose a small aperture if you need a large depth of field. The faint starlight of the stars is basically invisible under a small aperture. So we can shoot with full aperture.

A star with a shutter time of 15 minutes and a star with a shutter time of 30 minutes.

A stellar orbit with a shutter time of 50 minutes.

Shooting point

First exposure

Shooting a circular star orbit can't be done in one exposure. We need multiple exposures and final synthesis before a circular star orbit can appear. Our first exposure time is about 40 minutes. We made a second exposure in the same position for about 40 minutes. Note that the "long exposure noise reduction" function of the camera is turned off, otherwise the processing time will take 40 minutes.

Third exposure

The third exposure did not move the camera, and the time was 40 minutes. The last three works are synthesized by PS in the later period. If you want a more perfect circle, you can expose it several times. Shoot the traffic on the corner.

We may all have seen such a picture: the bustling traffic turns into beautiful colored lines. Yes, this shooting technique is very simple. But there is still a certain technical content. We should be rigorous when shooting any subject, whether it is simple or complex.

When we take pictures of traffic, we should take them slowly first. Put the camera firmly behind the tripod, determine the composition through the viewfinder, and fix the tripod head. Set the camera exposure mode to "M" and the shutter to 10 second. In order to make the lights and street lamps of buildings appear in the shape of stars, we can set the aperture smaller. We set the aperture to F22 here. You can turn on the "long exposure noise reduction" function of the camera and turn on the "mirror pre-lift" kinetic energy. The white balance is set to Fluorescent.

Under normal shooting, keep the camera stable and ensure the clarity of the film. To choose a more stable tripod, be sure to lock the tripod head after composition. You can switch the lens to "MF" manual focusing mode and adjust the zoom ring to infinity. Turning on the "mirror pre-lift" function of the camera can reduce the impact of shutter vibration on the camera. The above picture shows the creative shooting effect without tripod.

Progressive article

Light painting is the creator of night: the background should be dark enough.

Night provides us with a stage to create pictures, just like a canvas. The darker the background, the clearer the lines. So choose the right place to shoot. Stay away from some bright places, otherwise the shutter speed cannot be slowed down.

Control the brightness of the background

Light painting is an important part of creative photography at night. The focus of light painting lies in the brightness of the background: the background light is too bright, and the lines of light painting are thin and not obvious; If the background is too dark, there will be more black fields in the painted works, which will make the picture look empty. Also pay attention to people's clothes as black as possible, so that they will not be worn under the condition of long-term exposure. If you wear light-colored clothes, there may be people in the picture due to the reflection of light. Of course, if you want to try some light-colored paintings of characters, you can also wear light-colored clothes. But try to wear some dark clothes, and it is better to draw light-colored pictures with simple lines.

Shooting point

Pay attention to the exposure time when shooting.

Generally speaking, the exposure time is 2 minutes. The longer the shutter time, the less obvious the people in the picture, but the lines drawn by the light may have no layers and overlap badly; The shorter the shutter time, the more likely the characters are to stay in the picture and the lighter the lines are. Like the spherical light painting in the picture, we need to rotate our bodies and swing the rope tied to the flashlight back and forth to make a circular motion. Be careful not to swing too fast. Ultimate article

Flashlight sweep: the light should be uniform

Sweeping light with a flashlight is also a kind of light painting, but because of the divergence of flashlight light, we need to control the scanning process well. The purpose is also to create light in the dark night and shoot creative works completely different from long-term exposure. Flashlight scanning effect

Long exposure of photos taken without flash scanning

Sweep the subject first.

Sweeping is also a creative shooting at night. Similar to the previous shooting method, it is also a long exposure, and it also needs slow door shooting, and the time is about 10-20 seconds. Because of the length of scanning time and the white balance of the camera, it may be very different from daytime shooting or long exposure.

Try it. It's like coloring a picture with the color temperature of a flashlight.

When we sweep the flashlight, we can sweep the light by staying on the main body that we want to highlight for a long time and then staying on the secondary object. In this way, the subject will get more light, while the background will get less light. Pay attention to control the dwell time of scanning as much as possible, and don't let the picture be overexposed or underexposed locally.

Long exposure combined with scanning for shooting.

When composing a composition, we should properly arrange the proportion of the sky.

Key points of shooting: First of all, we can use the aperture priority mode of the camera to simulate the exposure of a work and reduce the exposure compensation from 1 to 2. Then according to this exposure combination, shoot with a slow door. At the same time, we can take a flashlight and sweep the part we want to show. Be careful not to let yourself into the camera.

Turn-over film

Two other creative shooting methods: off-camera flash and HDR.

In fact, there are many creative shots at night, such as using off-camera flash. Due to space reasons, we only introduce one. In addition, we often shoot HDR works at night.

Off-board flash flashes against the light to shoot flowers.

If we have off-plane flash, there are many subjects that can be creatively shot at night. Here is only one kind, shooting creative flowers with off-camera flash. We buried the flash behind the flowers and hit the camera, using the light from the flash to create a very dreamy and dazzling effect.

When shooting, we can fill the front of the flower with a small flashlight to prevent overexposure of the background, underexposure of the foreground and excessive contrast of the picture. We can use the M-stop of the flash to slowly increase the power from the minimum until we get satisfactory results. In composition, we let the flowers cover the whole picture.

HDR shoots brightly lit downtown.

When the lights are gorgeous at night, we can shoot high-definition HDR works. HDR at night is slightly different from HDR shooting during the day. Clouds are all black at night. No matter how tolerant HDR is, it is difficult to completely restore the details of the sky. So when shooting, we should try not to shoot when it is completely dark, or not to take pictures with the sky.

We can look for brightly lit streets and take gorgeous photos of the city. Using the great tolerance of HDR, the picture can achieve the fantasy effect of "no shadow". Pay a little attention, the aperture is set relatively small. On the one hand, it can turn the light into a beautiful star, on the other hand, it can reduce the highlight contrast of the picture.