How to shoot a charming night scene

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

1. Stable tripod

When shooting night scenes, it often takes a long exposure. I believe even beginners know that a large aperture will blur, which is commonly used by people, while a small aperture has a large clear distance, which makes it easy to shoot beautiful stars. But long exposure takes several seconds, even hundreds of thousands of seconds, and hand-held exposure can never guarantee its stability. If the tripod is not stable enough, the film will be blurred, especially when it is windy on the mountain. Some photographers shoot sunrises and sunsets at the seaside. The sea breeze is strong, or when shooting rough waves, there are often hurricanes. The tripod must be steady at this time. Therefore, a stable tripod is one of the necessary accessories for photographers to shoot night scenes.

2. Try to find the correct white balance.

Finding the right white balance does not mean finding out the color temperature accurately when shooting. Usually, some deviated color temperatures will produce unexpected results. The correct color temperature reflects only a normal and ordinary scene, and? Incorrect? Color temperature will make the film more illusory or wonderful.

We can imagine that the cold white balance may make the film become sci-fi, just like the sci-fi film Avatar, while the warm color film will present a prosperous feeling, and colorful scenes will appear in front of us, so we try various color temperatures to find the most suitable white balance when shooting.

Take pictures in RAW format

In fact, taking pictures in RAW format is not only for shooting night scenes, but also for adjusting shooting parameters more conveniently, such as color temperature, contrast, brightness and sharpness. When shooting night scenes, using RAW format can better preserve the later details and adjust some parameters.

4. Save in Tiff format

Many people will ask, why do you want to save in tiff format instead of jpg? My answer is that you can definitely use jpg format. However, if you want to keep the details better, or you want to look at the movies that have been put on for a long time in the future to modify them, tiff format is your best choice. There is a simple reason. We see that the picture in jpg format is 8 bits', while tiff is 16 bits, and the processed data will be better, much better than jpg. Especially when shooting at night, the film exposed for a long time may have some noise, and if it goes through many later stages, the color overflow will be obvious. For better modification in the future, try to save it in Tiff format.

5. Not only small aperture, but also large aperture.

When shooting at night, I often like to use a small aperture (f/ 16) for the sake of beautiful stars and large depth of field. However, a large aperture will also have a good side at night. If you use a large aperture at night, there will be light spots. If there are more light spots, you will feel a prosperous artistic conception.

We can highlight the details of the subject with a large aperture, showing a shallow depth of field effect. This method is often used in small scenes and sketches. In addition to the vast scenery, we shoot with a small aperture and a large depth of field, and the effect of a large aperture is shown with a shallow depth of field.

6. Use manual exposure (M file)

We believe in the camera's own metering, but when shooting night scenes, due to the complexity of lighting or other reasons, using M file can have better creativity. Generally speaking, as a field photographer, I prefer to use evaluation metering when shooting night scenes, because using spot metering at this time may make the metering point at the limit point (the brightest or darkest point), which will lead to overexposure or underexposure. When using manual exposure, we can quickly adjust the shutter speed through the diamond wheel, make a quick choice when it is too bright or too dark, and shoot the film in our mind in the most convenient way.

7. Use manual focusing as much as possible.

In the dark and at night, it may be difficult to focus with autofocus due to dim light. At this time, you can use manual focusing, especially to shoot some small scenes and some small-flavored works. Manual focusing can be more convenient, faster and more accurate. When shooting some wide-angle scenery and city night scenes (distant views), we can focus the lens as much as possible and then turn around a little. So I suggest you try to use manual focusing when shooting night scenes to make the film more perfect.

8. Use long exposure

When shooting at night, we can often use the light track or star track of traffic to set off the scenery. At this time, it is necessary to shoot with a slow door (long exposure). Through long exposure, running water can be as smooth and soft as silk. In order to avoid pedestrians when shooting some scenes, we can also choose to shoot for a long time, so that pedestrians disappear into your works as much as possible, which is more common in shooting landscape works.

In the long exposure, I suggest that beginners choose 30 seconds exposure or shorter exposure to avoid overexposure or underexposure with B-door exposure. Because the exposure time in the SLR fuselage is generally 1/8000-30 seconds or 1/4000-30 seconds, the longest exposure time is 30 seconds. If possible, use a longer exposure time, otherwise there will be unexpected gains.

9. Don't give up shooting in black and white

Why not give up shooting in black and white? At some time, or we need high-speed shutter shooting, but it is difficult to ensure that the shutter speed is within the safe speed at night, so we can only shoot by improving the sensitivity (iso). If you use color film, there will be a lot of noise with high sensitivity. You can use black and white photos, and the noise will be difficult to show. In fact, if you shoot in color, you might as well try to increase the saturation, otherwise it will have the taste of the film of that year.

Ok, but after reading these articles, I believe everyone will understand. Pick up your machine and pursue that one.