9 Tips for Photographing Landscapes in Low Light

Introduction: In most situations, we are accustomed to using aperture priority and shutter priority modes. It is inevitably daunting to switch to manual mode for a while, but the controllability and creativity brought by manual mode are absolutely You will have no regrets. In terms of application, after switching to manual mode, in order to adjust the appropriate exposure settings, first pay attention to your subject and the effect you want to achieve with the preset. This is the most important benchmark in exposure settings.

1. Use manual mode to completely control the camera

In terms of aperture setting, the best setting should be to retain the best sharpness of the picture and have enough light for allow. Unlike aperture priority mode, in manual mode we need to constantly change the exposure settings ourselves, especially during the "golden hour" (the half-hour before dawn and dusk), which is the time of day when the sunlight is softest and golden. The photos taken during this period feel quite dreamy, but the brightness of the environment will continue to change. One moment you take a photo, you may have to adjust the exposure again the next moment.

When shooting, it is recommended to turn on Live View and use the histogram for metering and exposure adjustment.

2. Be prepared for the composition of the picture

Low-light photography often requires constant experimentation and long exposure to achieve better results. Therefore, the shooting process usually takes a long time, so you must make more preparations before shooting.

When shooting sunset or night scenes, you must arrive at the scene at least one to two hours before sunset to prepare shooting equipment and find a suitable foreground. If you want to photograph the starry sky, you need to find a shooting location that is least affected by light. Once you have a composition in mind, the next step is to prepare the shots you need to express what you want.

Maybe you need a telephoto lens to make the subject stand out more and minimize the black area. Or maybe you need a wide-angle lens to condense the atmosphere you want to express. Think about the composition before shooting, try different settings when shooting, and one day you will be able to find your favorite direction.

3. The pursuit of stability

Carrying a heavy tripod to the mountains for shooting may indeed be a bit hard. However, since the light source is relatively weak after dusk, the exposure time is longer. Generally, depending on the shooting, you may need to use a slower shutter speed of 1/20 second or even as high as 30 seconds, 1 minute, or 2 minutes. When photographers hold the camera hand-held for too long, hand shake will occur, making the photos blurry. So in order to take good photos and maintain high sharpness, it is better to bring a tripod with you!

When placing the tripod, put it down at the approximate shooting position and align one of the feet with yours. The main body, then you can stand in the middle of the two rear legs. After placement, make sure the tripod platform is in a level position. Finally, if the shooting location is windy, you need to put something to fix the position of the tripod. Of course, when there is really no tripod, we can still try our best to shoot. For example, place the camera on a fixed position such as a railing or stone, hold the camera in a correct posture, or lean the body against a wall or railing to make the shooting more stable. These methods reduce movement during exposure, allowing images to remain clear and detailed.

4. Low-light focusing skills

If you have photographed night scenes, you may have tried but failed to take a picture when pressing the shutter button. The main reason is that the camera cannot The focus was locked, so the shooting function was locked and the shot could not be taken. So how can you shoot in a low-light environment?

The easiest way is to use manual focus. It is more convenient to use an electronic viewfinder (EVF) or a real-time display camera. Turn the brightness of the camera screen to the maximum, compose the picture, place the tripod stably, then place the subject in the focusing rectangle, press the magnification button, and then turn the focus ring until you get the sharpest picture. To help focus, try shining a flashlight on the subject in the dark.

5. Bracketing focus technique

Generally everyone thinks that bracketing shooting technique is only used for exposure, but in fact it can also be used for focusing. No matter how careful you are when taking pictures, there will always be some degree of human error. Therefore, by taking photos at different focal lengths, we can choose the best one on the big screen of the computer. The method is very straightforward. Focus first and then fine-tune to the closer and farther focus points to take different photos.

Sometimes when using manual focus in a low-light environment, you might as well try taking pictures at different focus points, so as not to find that the photo is out of focus after you get home and it will be difficult to recover.

6. Exposure bracketing skills

Same as focus bracketing, exposure bracketing is to take multiple pictures of the same frame (usually 3 pictures) with different shutter speeds to ensure the best results. It is most useful when you are not sure which setting is the correct exposure. Of course, there is no clear definition of correct exposure. The picture that expresses yourself is correct. Here we base it on data-driven exposure being correct.

Another technique of exposure bracketing, I believe everyone is aware of it, is high dynamic range HDR. The method of shooting is to first take a photo with the exposure indicator at 0, and then adjust the shutter speed to take an overexposed +1 photo and an underexposed -1 photo.

Finally, you can use HDR Pro in Adobe Photoshop to combine the three photos and make some fine adjustments.

7. Use filters to balance the light

Sometimes, such as at dusk or sunrise, the sky will be much brighter than the ground. If the exposure is based on the sky, the ground will be seriously underexposed. It will become completely black; if the exposure is based on the ground, the sky will be seriously overexposed and become a pale white. At this time, a graduated gray filter (GND) is needed to balance the light difference to avoid large overexposure or excessive darkness. Using the GND filter, you can make your photos look like HDR photos.

8. Try to avoid any camera shake

If you follow the above suggestions, everyone should be able to take good photos. But as a perfectionist photographer, there can be no room for error. Then what we need is a wired or infrared remote control to eliminate the slight vibration of pressing the shutter. If you don't have a remote control, you can use the countdown mode to achieve the same effect.

9. Use high sensitivity (ISO)

When shooting with high sensitivity, the noise will definitely increase, so we never use it very much. However, in low-light environments, the practicality of high sensitivity is that it allows us to obtain sufficient shutter speed to reduce image blur caused by shaking of equipment or subjects. It can also be used to increase the shutter speed to freeze momentary dynamics. Today's equipment can greatly control noise in both software and hardware, and even if the noise is obvious, the resulting work can still be very sharp because the shutter speed is increased to reduce image blur. In most cases, a photo with high noise but sharp image will be more successful than a photo with low noise but blurry image. So you might as well give it a try.