City night scene shooting raiders night scene shooting skills

City night scenes have always been the favorite of photographers, but shooting night scenes is a test of photography technology, because there is insufficient light at night, and it takes a long time to take good photos. If you want to shoot the night scene but don't know how to shoot it, then this guide will tell you in detail!

Use a tripod

If you want to take a long exposure night scene, a tripod is an indispensable helper. Speaking of tripods, ordinary cheap tripods can't do it. I had the painful experience of shooting with a cheap tripod and the camera was blown down by a strong wind. 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, remember to tighten the screws connecting the camera and coins when connecting the quick-loading board. This is necessary when you shoot vertically with a telephoto lens, because the weight of the camera will make the quick board 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 can be used to hang heavy objects such as camera bags. 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 star tracks in the wild or shooting car tracks in the center of city streets, we need to find a sheltered position to block the impact of strong winds and the airflow generated by roaring cars.

Turn off anti-shake

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

Looking for lighting

At present, most compact cameras or SLR cameras 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, there are often problems in focusing when there is no light at night, which does not mean that focusing in a bright place is enough. Because many times, the object you want to shoot is not necessarily a luminous object, you still need enough ambient lighting to illuminate your subject, such as using a flash to assist shooting.

The timing of shooting night scenes

In fact, shooting night scenes didn't start until it was completely dark; Usually after sunset 15 to 45 minutes is the best time to shoot bright colors with sharp contrast between cold and warm. Because the sky blue effect can be taken during this period, it is called sunset blue, so it is usually taken together with sunset and night scene, so we should grasp the time.

Methods and skills of night scene shooting

Small aperture shooting

Shoot with a small aperture, because the depth of field of the small aperture is smaller, so that distant scenery or objects will not be blurred. Stars with small apertures stand out. Generally, there are unexpected stars when fireworks or lights gather.

Combined exposure using manual exposure mode

Set ISO to the lowest value, set the aperture size, and focus on the camera display screen with magnification of 10 to see if the focus is clear; Check the shutter speed on the camera monitor according to the current environment. The combination of different exposures in the scene is also different.

1. Try to shoot in raw format, so the width will be larger later.

2. Using timed shooting or cable release shooting can reduce unnecessary vibration to the machine.

Camera settings

Camera settings are mainly in three aspects: exposure, focusing and white balance.

1. exposure

At night, the light is weak and there are many dark parts, so it is easy to be overexposed when shooting according to the photometric results of the camera. Therefore, it is suggested to reduce the exposure compensation by about 1.

Among the three elements of exposure, the aperture depends on the shooting effect.

It is suggested to set the sensitivity in the range of 100~ 1600 for night shooting, and relax it to 100~6400 for high-end cameras. The noise performance in this range is tolerable.

Finally, the shutter speed. Due to the limited sensitivity, the aperture cannot be increased when adjusting the maximum aperture. Only by reducing the shutter speed can the exposure be increased. Especially shooting large scenes with large depth of field, small aperture and small sensitivity can only slow the shutter speed to the extreme.

2. Focus

Focusing is easy to make mistakes in low light environment, and manual focusing MF is recommended here. Especially when shooting scenery, manual focusing is the most accurate way to adjust the clear range.

3. White balance

Generally, the night is blue and cold, the lights are warm, and the contrast between cold and warm is more feeling.

It is suggested to select automatic white balance first, check the color temperature value after shooting, and then adjust it to the custom color temperature K value. Reducing the color temperature by about 500 will have different effects.