Four methods of shooting night scenes

Lead: Night scenes have always been a favorite subject for photographers, so what should be paid attention to for beginners? Now I will share with you six tips that the author will use when shooting night scenes!

A tripod is very important.

A stable tripod is very important for shooting night scenes. Usually, a slow shutter is used to shoot night scenes. If the tripod is not stable enough, the photos will be blurred. Especially when the wind is strong in mountainous areas, the impact is even greater. A good tripod can be used for a long time after careful maintenance, and it is worth investing in photographic equipment.

The photo was taken by modenadude.

Pictures of J.A. Alcaide.

(2) Use manual exposure mode.

I use aperture priority mode most of the time to effectively control the depth of field and shutter speed (the larger the aperture, the higher the shutter speed). But I mostly use manual exposure mode to shoot night scenes. Beginners of photography will ask, parameters such as aperture, shutter and sensitivity in manual mode need to be set by themselves, so how should we start? It's actually quite simple. I will set the initial value according to the following procedure:

First, use aperture priority mode to measure light, set aperture value and sensitivity, such as f/8 and ISO200, and finally the shutter speed given by the camera is 2 seconds;

Then switch to manual exposure mode, set the aperture to f/8, the sensitivity to ISO 200, the shutter speed to 2 seconds, and shoot once;

Check the shooting effect and set the exposure parameters with reference to the histogram if necessary. If you feel dark as a whole, you will generally choose to extend the exposure time without increasing the aperture or improving the sensitivity. This is because the camera has been installed on a tripod, and changing the shutter speed will only affect the cumulative luminous flux. If you increase the aperture, the depth of field will be shallow, and increasing the sensitivity will bring noise problems.

The photo was taken by the express monorail train.

The photo was taken by Michael Cornell.

(3) modify the white balance

Modifying the white balance is to change the color of the photo. You don't have to use automatic white balance to shoot night scenes. In many cases, changing the white balance can make your photos have different effects. 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. So you can try different white balance settings in the same scene.

The photo was taken by Kern Justin.

The photo was taken by Spramben.

(4) Shooting with different apertures

You don't have to use a small aperture to shoot night scenes. Although a small aperture (such as f/8) will deepen the depth of field, sometimes we can shoot the night scene with a large aperture, such as the following three situations:

When shooting a very dark scene but can't slow down the shutter. For example, to shoot the starry sky, it is necessary to use a high sensitivity+large aperture +30 seconds shutter, otherwise it will be difficult to shoot successfully;

Hand-held shooting. Hand-held shooting? Safety shutter? If the shutter is too slow, it is easy to shake the picture. At this time, it is necessary to increase the aperture and increase the sensitivity if necessary.

Use shallow depth of field effect to highlight details. Don't keep the composition unchanged. Besides shooting at night, can I shoot? Dajing? In addition, you can also take good photos by highlighting details with shallow depth of field effect. At this time, a large aperture can be used to create a shallow depth of field, and Christmas lighting is a good example.

The photo was taken by B.Romain.

Photos taken by MSVG

(5) Slow shutter

Slow shutter is a very interesting and useful shooting technique. Using a slow shutter to shoot at night, you can shoot beautiful car tracks, star tracks, light paintings and even some invisible light. You can try to find a hill without light and slow down the shutter speed to see what you get.

Photo by Martin Gomel

Photo by Ian Thorne

(6) Use black cards

The use of black cards is very simple, even for beginners. The principle is to use the non-reflective black card to block the bright area during long exposure, so that the dark part of the picture can absorb more light, and even take photos in Gao Fancha environment. This technology will make the photos different. Try it today!

Photo taken by marcp_dmoz (together with HDR)