Have you mastered these night photography skills?

Shooting night scenes is one of the favorite themes of many photographers. We can shoot night scenes and portraits at night, but many photographers always find problems in exposure, focus and white balance when shooting night scenes. So how can we shoot a good night scene? Today, I would like to share the shooting points of the night scene, hoping to help everyone.

First, the pros and cons of shooting night scenes

Shooting night scenes has certain advantages and disadvantages. Let's learn about the advantages and disadvantages of taking night scenes first.

Night shooting, due to the weak light at night, many environmental elements are blocked by darkness, which makes the picture appear as a natural black background, simplifies the picture elements and makes it easier for our photographers to see at a glance. Moreover, the night environment is more conducive to the shooting of various light tracks, such as star tracks, car tracks, light paintings and other themes, which can give people more dreamy visual effects.

Of course, there are many inconveniences in shooting night scenes, such as the relatively weak light at night, the need for lighting to help shoot portraits and other subjects, the need to control the focus of shooting night scenes, and the adjustment of white balance in the overall atmosphere of night scenes. Therefore, if you want to shoot a more effective night scene, you need to master certain shooting skills.

Second, the shooting points of the night scene

The focus of night scene shooting is shutter speed control and anti-shake, learning a variety of supplementary light methods, achieving precise focusing, and reasonably adjusting the white balance control picture atmosphere. Learning these skills can usually cope with most night scenes.

1, shutter speed control and anti-shake

Night scene shooting often needs to increase exposure, but because it is necessary to take night scene photos with large depth of field, the aperture should not be too large; If you want to get better night photos, the sensitivity should not be too high, otherwise there will be noise that will affect the image quality. In this case, in order to improve the exposure of photos, it is necessary to slow down the shutter speed (increase the exposure time).

The slow shutter speed requires us to do a good job of anti-shake, otherwise it is easy to paste the photos. There are several ways to prevent image jitter:

① Use a tripod with cable release;

② Turn off the lens anti-shake function;

③ Pre-raising the reflector or real-time display shooting;

(4) When there is no pay-off, you can consider delaying the self-timer to stabilize the image.

We often use the above methods to stabilize the image when shooting the star track, car track, light painting, starry sky and other themes in the night scene.

2, learn a variety of ways to fill the light

The light in the shooting environment at night is weak, which requires photographers to learn how to make up the light for the shooting subject with the help of existing lights or lighting props. Common lighting methods are as follows:

(1) Make up the light with the help of street lamps, window lamps, car lamps and other light sources;

② Use fairy wand, flashlight, candlelight and other light sources to fill the light;

(3) Use a flash to fill the light. It is best to install a soft lampshade in front of the flash, otherwise the light is too hard;

④ Use professional fill light props such as LED fill light lamps to fill light.

Not all of the above lighting methods are commonly used in night shooting. More methods are welcome.

3. Achieve accurate focusing

Night shooting is not easy to focus for two reasons. First, the night light is too weak, and it is very easy to lose focus when using autofocus. Second, because the photographer wants to open a large aperture and ignores the depth of field, he often focuses on other areas.

Therefore, there are two common methods to achieve accurate focusing: one is to use manual focusing MF and manually adjust the focusing ring to achieve accurate focusing, which is not easy to cause out-of-focus problems, but the shooting efficiency will slow down; The second is to narrow the aperture to widen the depth of field, so that the night scene will be very clear, so you are not afraid of focusing error, but this needs to increase the exposure time, that is, slow down the shutter speed.

4. Adjust the white balance reasonably and control the picture atmosphere.

The overall color atmosphere of the night scene also has a great influence on the photos. We need to adjust the white balance reasonably to control the picture atmosphere. Let's first understand how white balance affects the picture atmosphere:

The value of white balance is from low to high, and the color change of the picture starts from blue. Normal? Yellow, the picture atmosphere is from blue cool tone to yellow warm tone, so:

Reduce the value of white balance, such as 4500K, the overall picture effect of night scene will be blue, and there will be a sense of tranquility at night;

Increase the value of white balance, such as 6000K, and the lights in the night scene will be yellower and warmer, giving people a bright feeling.

Therefore, if the photographer wants to show the coolness and quietness at night, he will lower the white balance to get a cool blue atmosphere; If you want to show brilliant lighting, you should improve the white balance to get a warm yellow atmosphere. The key is what the photographer wants to show.