Because taking a photograph is essentially a matter of capturing light, the night photograph is not always an easy thing to accomplish. Nevertheless there is a profound public interest in capturing photographic images at night. This article is geared towards the night scene or landscape and helps you “bend the rules” of photography a bit in order to take great nighttime photographs.

Recommended Equipment
Before attempting a night photo shoot, make sure you have these items packed:

• Digital or film camera with manual aperture and shutter speed capability
• Solid tripod
• Bright Flashlight
• Low ISO film (digital users can set their ISO to a low setting)
• Auxiliary light such as an off camera flash (optional)
• Cable release or remote trigger for your camera’s shutter (optional)

Find Your Scene
Find the night scene you want to capture and set up your tripod. Be sure to tighten your tripod’s camera mount snugly.

Part of finding the right scene also includes looking for dynamic lighting, interesting shapes, textures, and juxtapositions, anything that seems to have a special meaning at nighttime. Keep in mind, objects that are not particularly special during the day can become beautiful subjects after the sun sets.

Correct White Balance and ISO
The most common white-balance and ISO combination for night landscape photography is Tungsten/Indoor at ISO 200. Shooting with ISO 200 or lower is a good idea because it offers the best fidelity for your photograph, although it does force longer shutter speeds (another reason to invest in a good tripod). Try to avoid using the daylight white balance setting for night scenes as it will often capture skewed colors that are too yellow.

Set your Aperture
Pick an appropriate Aperture (f-stop) setting. For long night exposures (30 seconds or more) it is often recommended to use a bigger number (smaller opening) aperture such as f16 or f22 in order to capture crisp detail in the foreground and background. If your camera does not offer long exposure (at least 30 seconds), you should try using an aperture setting of f2.8 or 5.6 in order to capture enough light for a properly exposed photograph. Keep in mind that with smaller number apertures, focus will start to become a major issue. You might want to keep a flashlight handy to aide yourself in focusing at night!

Meter for Light and Select Shutter Speed
Lighting conditions can be so tricky at night, they tend to trick your light meter too! If you are shooting in an area with sparse artificial lighting (street lamps, neon signs, car headlights), you will often find your light meter overexposes the photograph. As a starting point, try picking a shutter speed that is 2-3 stops faster (underexposed) from what your meter reading tells you. Shutter speeds for night scenes can range anywhere from 15 seconds to several minutes.

An exception to the “2-3 stops under” rule is when you are shooting under completely natural light such as moonlight. If there are no artificial lights to be found, you can often trust your meter reading for good exposure.

Focusing at Night
Focusing at night can be difficult because built in autofocus systems cannot do their job without light. If you can’t get a good manual or auto focus lock on your subject, try pointing that flashlight (bet you’re glad you brought it now) at the center of where your camera’s focus point is. Now hold the shutter button half-way down, but not enough to take a picture. This will help obtain a good focus lock. After you’ve focused once for a scene, switch to manual focus if possible and your camera will not have to hunt for focus each time you take an exposure.

If you are photographing a landscape where the objects are mostly far away from your lens, try using a small aperture (say, f22), and focusing manually to infinity (as far out as you can focus). This technique often gives good results in situations where it is otherwise difficult to focus.

Getting Creative
If you have the optional off-camera flash (or other light source) available, try using it to light parts of your scene. Fire the flash from different angles or even paint the scene with a flashlight while the exposure is going. Since night exposures tend to be many seconds (or minutes) long, you should have ample time to create your own dynamic lighting.

In the shot above, I used a single flash and simply snuck across the middle of the frame (while still exposing) to fire the flash again with a different gel. Most of the time in long exposure night shots, there won’t even be sufficient light for the camera to record an image of you walking across the frame. Ooooh, you’re the phantom photographer!

Well, have fun at it… till next time!

-PL

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