Digital Photography Articles

Showing posts with label night photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label night photography. Show all posts

Monday 28 September 2009

Tips For Night Photography

Tips For Night Photography

When you are taking pictures, you may feel like you are restricted to daytime photography to accurately capture the lighting in your images. However, nighttime can present a number of wonderful photo opportunities, such as family pictures under Christmas lights and even casual shots of groups of friends going out at night.

Luckily, there are a number of adjustments that you can make to your camera to help you make your night pictures either as true to life as possible or as stylistic as you want.

First, let's take a look at how cameras actually capture images. Whether you have a digital camera or a film device, the most important thing is the light that comes into the machine. Light activates a photosensitive object inside the camera, basically burning the image into it.

With film cameras, the photosensitive object is the film itself. In digitals, there is a charge-coupled device, or a CCD, that basically translates the amount of light received into an electronic image with pixels.

There are three very important things in adjusting the amount of light that comes into a camera. First, you have the aperture, or the diameter of the lens opening. This is important because a wider diameter lets in more light. This can be very helpful if you are taking pictures at night so that you can fully capture all the light that is present, brightening up your entire image.

Second, the shutter speed is key as well. The longer the shutter is open, the more light hits your photosensitive substance. While this can make for streaky images, it can also allow the light to be more strongly burned into your picture.

Lastly, you can change your ISO settings. ISO refers the sensitivity level of the film or CCD. If you have a film camera, you can buy film with different light sensitivity levels. If you have an adjustable digital camera, you may be able to change your ISO setting manually.

For night photography, making your ISO more sensitive can be helpful, although you walk a fine line between making something too sensitive and not sensitive enough. This is because the higher your ISO, the more "noise" or graininess you have in the picture.

A good rule of thumb for night photography is to make the most of the light you have. This can mean lengthening your shutter speed, widening your aperture, and making your ISO a little more photosensitive.

However, you may have to experiment a little to find the perfect balance between these three adjustments. Making your camera more reactive to light can help you take a sharper, more realistic photo.

If you want to experiment with more stylistic night photos, consider lengthening your shutter speed as much as possible as lights pass by. This will make them all blur together in one big streak. This style is popular with taking pictures of highways and even pointing your camera up at the stars.

Joseph Devine

Once you know how to successfully adjust your camera, you can come closer and closer to taking the picture that you are looking for. When you get the perfect shot, you don't want to let it hide away in a small picture frame. To fully display your photo, consider having it made into a canvas. For more information, check out YourCanvasPhotos today.