How to shoot the night scene?

As night falls, the biggest challenge we face when shooting night scenes may be that the camera doesn't receive enough light, which leads to the failure of focusing, so shooting night scenes is also a pain point for many movie friends. The following 8 tips can help you control the night scene easily and take sharp photos.

1. Use a tripod

If you want to shoot a long-exposure night scene, a tripod is an indispensable helper. Speaking of tripods, ordinary cheap tripods are no good. I had the painful experience that my camera was blown down by a strong wind when shooting with a cheap tripod. So you must have a solid and reliable tripod to help you shoot. If your tripod has a device that can adjust the tightness of the foot tube, check whether these parts are stable before shooting. In addition, when connecting Allegro, remember to tighten the screws connecting the camera with coins, which is necessary when you use telephoto lens for vertical shooting, because the weight of the camera will make Allegro slide down from the pan/tilt. The stronger your tripod is, the more it can support your camera. Please make sure your tripod is stable before shooting.

Stabilize the center of gravity

Many tripods have a weight hook at the end of the central axis, which allows you to hang heavy objects such as camera bags on them. When you encounter bad weather such as strong wind, the 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, so as to minimize the shaking.

Seek asylum

Whether shooting the star track in the wild or shooting the car track in the center of the city street, we need to find a sheltered position to block the air impact caused by strong winds and roaring cars.

4. Turn off anti-shake

Camera lens anti-shake and camera body anti-shake are to minimize the jitter of hand-held shooting. But when you shoot with a tripod, remember to turn off this function to reduce unnecessary picture blur caused by factory anti-shake during working hours.

Looking for lights

Most compact cameras or SLR cameras now have a keen focusing system, but they all need enough working brightness. If you have enough brightness when shooting, your camera can automatically focus smoothly. However, when there is no light at night, there will often be problems in focusing, which does not mean that focusing in a bright place is enough, because many times the target you want to shoot is not necessarily a luminous object, so you still need enough ambient lighting to illuminate your subject, such as 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 such a bad environment at night, we strongly recommend that you separate the focus button from the shooting button, because if you shoot with an independent AF-ON, the camera will not continue to focus when you press the shutter.

7. Make good use of manual focusing

The efficiency of autofocus is poor when the light is bad, so manual focusing is your only choice at this time, but just like a camera, your eyes need enough light to see the object clearly. In some cases, it may be better to activate the live view function of the camera. The camera will show your picture, and the screen will be brighter than the naked eye. Some lenses are equipped with a focus distance window, and you can also manually focus to select the corresponding focus range.

8. Use cable release and reflector pre-lifting function.

If you want to get a clear picture, you can avoid the vibration caused by the lifting of the reflector when the shutter is pressed by releasing the cable and pre-lifting the reflector.