What are the night shooting skills?

Night scenes need more skills than daytime because they need the assistance of other photographic accessories. Even if you have a high ISO camera with super aperture and excellent noise control, your night scene will make a qualitative leap as long as you have the following tips. Below I will introduce you to the night shooting skills, hoping to help you, welcome to read!

What are the night shooting skills? 1. Preparation and use of accessories and equipment.

First of all, you need to know what kind of equipment you need to take a night scene: manually expose the camera with manual focus, so that you can take a photo according to your own ideas; Shooting night scenes generally requires good plane position and long exposure, and tripod+cable play is the most basic.

1. tripod

Use a tripod

If you want to take a long-exposure night scene,

A tripod is an indispensable helper.

Speaking of tripods, it's best not to use too cheap tripods.

A bad tripod is hard to maintain absolute stability.

The night scene belongs to the scene with low light source, so a stable tripod is needed for long-time exposure shooting, otherwise the hand-held camera under the slow shutter will take a blurred image; As for the choice of pan-tilt collocation, it is suggested that spherical pan-tilt is better, which is convenient for quick control and composition. You can also hang your bag under a tripod to increase stability.

Stabilize the center of gravity

Many tripods have a heavy hook at the end of the central axis.

You can hang heavy objects such as camera bags on it.

When encountering bad weather such as strong wind.

Strong wind may bring great vibration to your tripod at any time.

The best solution is to hang your camera bag on the central axis and let it touch the ground.

This can minimize shaking.

Seek asylum

Whether you're shooting tracks in the wild,

Or shoot car tracks in the center of a city street?

You need to find a shelter from the strong wind.

And the air impact caused by roaring cars.

4. Turn off anti-shake

Camera lens anti-shake and fuselage anti-shake

Designed to minimize the jitter of hand-held shooting.

But remember to turn off this function when shooting with a tripod.

So as to reduce unnecessary picture blurring caused by anti-shake manuscripts during working hours.

Looking for lights

Nowadays, most compact cameras or SLR cameras have a keen focusing system.

But they all need enough working brightness.

If there is enough brightness when shooting

Your camera can focus automatically and smoothly.

But there are often problems with focusing when there is no light at night.

And it doesn't mean that as long as you focus on a bright place, it's enough.

Because many times, the object you want to shoot is not necessarily a luminous object.

So you still need enough ambient lighting to illuminate your subject.

For example, using a flash to assist shooting.

Focus with the autofocus function.

Most people are used to using the shutter button to complete the whole process from focusing to shooting.

But when you shoot in this harsh environment at night,

We strongly recommend that you use the focus and shoot keys respectively.

Because if you shoot with an independent "autofocus",

When you press the shutter, the camera will not continue to focus.

7. Make good use of manual focusing

When the light is bad, the efficiency of autofocus will be poor.

So manual focusing is your only choice at this time.

But like a camera,

Your eyes also need enough light to see the subject clearly.

In some cases, activating the live view function of the camera may get better results.

The camera will display the photos you took.

And the screen will be brighter than the naked eye can see.

Some lenses are equipped with focal length windows.

You can also manually focus to select the corresponding focus range.

8. Cable release device

Use the cable to release.

If you want to get a clear picture,

Cable release can avoid the vibration caused by pressing the shutter.

In order to prevent camera shake, cable release is also an indispensable auxiliary tool. It can not only effectively avoid the instantaneous vibration caused by pressing the shutter, but also master the required exposure time through the B shutter function. If there is no cable release, you can use the camera's delayed self-timer function to avoid the vibration caused by pressing the shutter by hand.

9. About the lens

There are no special requirements for the lens used for shooting night scenes. The lens with strong anti-glare ability can get twice the result with half the effort, and it is more convenient to shoot the night scene of a large scene with a wide-angle lens. Remember to put a hood on the lens. Most of the light around the lens at night is a point light source. The hood can avoid the interference of other light on the picture, and it is best to remove the UV mirror in front of the lens.

Second, choose the right time and place.

1. Choose the best time to shoot the night view of the city.

The best time to shoot night scenes is 5 minutes before sunset and 30 minutes after sunset. At this time, the color of the sky changes with the passage of time, and its color may change in the order of yellow-orange-red-purple-blue-black. During this time, you can get a beautiful background color by shooting the night in the city. During this time, the light in the sky can still outline the outline of the building, so the picture will not only show bright city lights, but also show the looming outline of the city building, and the formal beauty of the picture will be improved.

If there is a sunset glow in the sky, the picture will be more colorful. Gorgeous sunset glow and bright city lights can render the most beautiful night view of the city.

Shooting experience: When shooting an object at night, it usually takes a long exposure. In order not to waste time and shooting opportunities, before the actual shooting, we can adjust the ISO to a higher value, pre-shoot at a higher shutter speed, and optimize the elements of composition or on-site shooting by observing this photo.

Shoot the night view of the city before it is completely dark. The blue sky and the lights on the ground buildings form a cold and warm contrast, which makes the picture effect more prominent.

Focal length 24mm aperture F 13 shutter speed 15s sensitivity ISO400

2. Use the reflection of water to increase the atmosphere

If you think that night photography is only the buildings on the ground and the night sky, then you have lost the beautiful scenery. Shooting night scenes in places with lakes and rivers often leads to the most beautiful night scenes.

For example, you can be by the lake in a city park or by the sea not far from home. As long as night falls, brightly lit buildings will form a very beautiful reflection on the water.

When shooting night buildings with water reflections, we must carefully arrange the horizontal lines. If the focus is on the night scene on the shore, we can put it in the lower third of the picture. On the other hand, if the key performance is the sparkling effect in water, it should be placed in the top third of the screen.

Shooting experience: Pay attention to the wind speed when shooting. If the wind speed is small, even if there is a little wave on the water surface, the reflection effect will not be greatly affected by the long exposure time. However, if the wind speed is high, it's best to shoot another day, because too high a wind speed will make the reflection on the water surface look messy and broken.

When shooting night scenes, you can add color reflections in the water, which can make the picture more colorful and make the city look more prosperous and gorgeous.

Focal length 17mm aperture F 1 1 shutter speed 15s sensitivity ISO200.

3. Take a beautiful car to float the track.

A common mistake in shooting the streamer trajectory of a car is to choose to shoot it when it is completely dark. Actually, it should have been taken before it was completely dark. At this time, the sky is sapphire blue, and the photographed sky is beautiful.

In order to make the car streamer of the photo have charming S-shaped lines, it is very important to choose the shooting location, and find the observation location where you can see the curve. If you shoot on the overpass, the light rail line that appears in the picture must be a straight line with a sense of convergence, not an S-shape.

Shutter priority mode or B-door exposure mode should be selected when shooting. Under the premise of not overexposure, the exposure time is directly proportional to the length of the traffic light rail on the final screen. If the exposure time is not long enough, the picture may be broken and the picture is not beautiful enough.

If you want the light line to appear in the air, you should shoot the double-decker bus from the perspective of looking up.

Choose to shoot the traffic light rail in the area where the road conditions are relatively flat, and look at the light rail in the picture, as if the car roared past. When shooting, you must use a tripod and a flat cable to ensure clear picture quality.

Shooting experience: Although using a large aperture can improve the luminous flux and shutter speed of the lens, we should try to use a small aperture when shooting the traffic at night to get a greater depth of field, so that the traffic trajectory in the picture can be more clear and obvious. In addition, using a small aperture can make the light track in the picture thinner, and even in the position where the traffic is concentrated in the picture, the light will not merge together.

4. Shoot a city that never sleeps with a small aperture and a little starlight.

The beauty of the city at night lies in the lights. When dusk falls and the lights are on, the little lights weave a gorgeous coat for the city.

In order to shoot beautiful city lights and make them shine with long starlight, a small aperture is needed, and the reference value range is F 16~F20. The smaller the aperture, the stronger the light, and the more obvious the starlight effect. But the following problem is that the exposure time is long, so the stability of shooting must be the key factor. If you want to shoot beautiful stars with your camera, you can try setting the ISO value.

The small aperture lengthens the exposure time to shoot the night of the city, which gives the city the effect of starry sky.

Shooting experience: A large number of shooting practice cases show that the number of lens aperture blades used in shooting has a certain influence on the lighting effect in the picture. When the number of diaphragm blades is even, the number of light is the same as the number of diaphragm blades, which looks a bit stiff. However, when the number of diaphragm blades is odd, the number of rays is twice that of diaphragm blades, and the effect is better.

Night shooting is not to wait until the night falls completely, otherwise there is only a single artificial light source left in the darkness. Walking around the city, it is not difficult to find the best shooting location. Bright lighting and clear background are the best principles.

5. Seize prime time

65438+ 0-2 hours after sunset is the "prime time" for night photography. At this time, the lights went on and night fell. Some clouds, the afterglow of the sunset, the sky is sapphire blue, with a strong sense of color hierarchy, the nightlife of the city has begun, and the night scene is well outlined. Of course, it is also a good choice on a full moon night and when the sky is blue and purple.

Step 6 choose the right seat

If you shoot the night view of the city, the most representative buildings, characteristic pedestrian streets, streets with night lights and lakes and rivers with colorful nights can all be the best shooting locations. If you want to shoot a long-exposure star orbit, clean air is the first condition. You need to find a place away from all kinds of pollution caused by dust, fog and city lights.

Third, practical skills when shooting

Essential elements of night scene: low ISO+ reasonable exposure+good use of manual function, inaccurate focusing and photometry will affect film quality. Aperture, shutter, ISO, exposure compensation, safety shutter, depth of field and aperture priority are all common knowledge that need to be learned!

1. Manual mode shooting

In night scene shooting, A-stop aperture is recommended for most scenes, but the buildings at night and the light in the sky are more complicated, and automatic metering is also prone to errors. When the light is bad, the efficiency of autofocus will be very poor. Manual mode can make you shoot the desired effect better.

2. Reduce the sensitivity (ISO)

Especially when shooting night scenes, long exposure will obviously affect the image quality of dark noise. With the support of tripod and cable release, there is no need to use high ISO, after all, the quality of low ISO is better.

3. The use of aperture size

Using the aperture size, you can also change various image changes at night. A large aperture can have a fantastic Jiao Wai, while a small aperture can enlarge the depth of field, and can obtain a longer exposure time and a star-like spot. Select the aperture as needed.

4. Slow shutter exposure for a long time

Long exposure is a common skill in shooting night scenes. At night, using a slow shutter to shoot 10 seconds, minutes or even hours, you can shoot beautiful car tracks, star tracks, light paintings and even some invisible light.

Set white balance

Changing the white balance when shooting at night can make your photos have a completely different effect. The balance between cold and white will make the city look sci-fi, while the balance between warm and white will make the city look lively and prosperous. Try not to use the automatic white balance function when shooting. You can try different white balance settings in the same scene, or shoot in white balance surround mode.

6. Black Card Dafa

When shooting the night scene, the lights of the building, the afterglow in the sky, and even the moon, and the ground is very dark, with great contrast. At this time, we can use a simple "shaking black card" to balance the light difference. The principle is to cover the bright area with a non-reflective black card when exposed for a long time, so that the dark part of the picture can absorb more light, and even photos with even exposure can be taken in Gao Fancha environment.

Ps: It is best to take photos in RAW file format at night, so that there is more processing space in post-production to reduce the loss of details and maintain the original quality of the picture to the greatest extent.