Photography tutorial: Lesson 3: How to take a night photo comparable to SLR with your mobile phone.

1. Learn the manual mode of using the mobile phone.

Manual mode interface

Shoot in manual mode with excellent picture quality. After zooming in, the car license plate number on the road is clearly visible.

When taking pictures at night, due to the dim ambient light, in order to get enough exposure, the mobile phone will automatically increase the sensitivity (ISO) to get enough light. If the sensitivity is too high, the photo will produce a lot of noise, which will affect the quality and clarity of the photo. The purpose of using mobile phone mode is to reduce the noise of photos and improve the quality of photos. By adjusting the shutter and extending the exposure time, you can also take photos with sufficient exposure, thus ensuring the quality of photos. (All the above photos were taken in manual mode. )

When shooting in manual mode, I usually set the ISO sensitivity to 100, auto-white balance and auto-focus, and then set the shutter to a larger value of about 8 seconds, with one Shoot first. If the exposure is excessive, the shutter time can be appropriately reduced, and if it is too dark, the shutter time can be appropriately increased. Until the photos taken are exposed normally.

Aperture F/2 shutter 1/58

Manual mode can not only take clear pictures, but also take beautiful facula by adjusting the focal length.

Last time, a friend asked me on WeChat, what do shutter, aperture and sensitivity mean respectively? In order to better use the manual mode, I want to explain here:

Shutter speed: Shutter speed controls the amount of light entering the camera. A slow shutter allows the camera to enter more light, thus improving the brightness of night shooting. Generally, the mobile phone automatically controls the shutter speed, and the shutter time can be set manually in manual mode.

Aperture: a device used to control the amount of light entering the photosensitive surface of the fuselage through the lens. The size of the aperture directly affects the amount of light entering and the depth of field. The smaller the f value of the aperture, the larger the aperture. Under the same ISO and shutter conditions, the larger the aperture, the brighter the picture will be.

Sensitivity (ISO): You can control the image quality and brightness of the whole photo by controlling the sensitivity of the camera's photosensitive element. The higher the sensitivity value, the more sensitive it is to light and the more noise it produces.

In order to understand the relationship between the three, we often use a glass of water in the faucet for analogy:

Water represents light, and the valve of the faucet is like the aperture of a camera. The bigger the valve is unscrewed, the bigger the gap, the bigger the water flow and the shorter the time to fill a glass of water.

Shutter speed is the time to turn on the tap. The longer it is opened, the more water will flow out.

Sensitivity is like a water cup. The smaller the glass, the higher the sensitivity, so the shorter the time to fill a glass of water, while the larger the glass, the lower the sensitivity, so the longer the time to fill a glass of water.

Shoot with a tripod

Mobile tripod 1

I use this kind of mobile phone tripod 2, which is easy to carry and can be fixed on the railing.

When shooting the night scene, the shutter speed of the mobile phone is slow because of the weak light. When you take a photo with your mobile phone, a slight shake will cause the picture to be blurred and blurred, which will lead to the blurred picture. At this time, if you use a tripod to stabilize the phone, the picture quality will be better. If you don't have a tripod, you can rely on railings and other places to increase stability, or lean your phone against a stable object to keep it stable and shoot with the countdown function.

3. Master the lighting for taking pictures at night

Don't blindly press the shutter when shooting at night. Before shooting, pay attention to the ambient light in the scene, find out the middle of the brightness in the picture as the focus, and click on the screen with your finger. It is recommended not to focus on the brightest and darkest parts of the picture. Because if the brightest place in the picture is the focus, the picture will be very dark. If the focus is in the darkest place, the picture will be overexposed.

4. Practical steps for shooting the night scene "light track":

Aperture F/2 shutter: 2 seconds ISO 100

1. Fix the tripod on the railing by the roadside first.

2. Connect the remote control to the mobile phone via Bluetooth, and put the mobile phone on the tripod.

3. Set the camera to manual mode, set the sensitivity to 100, set the shutter to 2 seconds, and aim one side of the camera of the mobile phone at the traffic on the road.

4. Wait patiently. When a car is driving, quickly press the remote shutter and wait for the shooting to end, and a beautiful photo of the track will be completed.

Note: Due to the difference of photosensitive elements of different mobile phones, if the shutter is too dark for 2 seconds during shooting, the shutter speed can be appropriately extended until a photo with normal exposure is taken.