How to: Take night pictures/Low light.

[cleoent]

The need for this thread is growing bigger and bigger by the day. It seems many of you guys are enjoying taking night pictures, I guess it's the new IN thing as far as car photography goes. That's all said and good, however, to be blunt, a lot of your night pictures are not very good. So i've decided that I will help you guys out, and combined with some of the more knowledgeable photographers on this board, we can make a thread that everyone can benefit from.

Here's some night shooting tips.

1 - Get a tripod. There is no reason you should attempt to take pictures at night if you dont have a tripod.

2 - If you dont have a tripod see if there is a stationary object that you can set your camera on so that it doesn't move during the exposure. There is 0 chance your hand will ever be steady enough. If you use this method, another tip would be to put your camera on a 3 to 10 second delay, so that when you push the button, your camera wont take a picture right away and you'll have time to move your finger and not disturb the image.

3 - Ok, now those two were pretty obvious. This one is important. Most digital camera's have an option to set the ISO. The higher the ISO the better the camera does at night. So, it would make sense to raise this setting. But that is NOT the case. What happens when you raise the ISO is picture noise is made a lot more visible. The higher the ISO the noisier the picture. Some of you may be thinking that your camera has an AUTO option for the ISO and that it would be best to leave it there. Well that's also incorrect. A lot of the noise seen in the pictures are because the camera has automatically raised the ISO for you, that's why your picture looks like crap. If you have to raise the ISO to get a decent shot, then please, for the sake of everyone here, run it through a free program like neat image (http://www.neatimage.com) and get rid of the noise.

4 - Try not to have to use the flash. If you can find a relatively well lit area to take pictures at night without the flash, that will make your pictures turn out that much better. If you use the flash as your single source of lighting you will not be able to take a good picture.

5 - The reason why you need a tripod, or stationary non-moving object to set your camera on is because for night shots the "eye" of your camera needs to stay open longer to suck in as much light as possible. This is called shutter speed. The slower the shutter speed the more light that will be in your picture. Experiment with this, on most camera's this is adjustable. If you have a setting on your camera to adjust only the shutter speed, use it, set the shutter speed to as long as possible and start experimenting.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I hope it helps some of you because the quality of night pics on this forum could use a boost!

If anyone wants to jump in and add their own tips that would be fantastic.

Here's a link to an anantech.com write up for night shots.

http://www.anandtech.com/digitalcame...oc.aspx?i=2351

[doodle]

Awesome post, thanks for the info .

[cleoent]

Originally Posted by doodle

Awesome post, thanks for the info .

No prob, when you get out and take some damn good shots make sure you post em up!

[6i9]

Good thread. Also, take into consideration aperture. On SLR cameras, this can be changed by rotating the dial on the lens. On other camera's it may be only controlled by an LCD display.

Aperture is measured in f-stops, which are numbers that represent how large the "opening" of your lens is. The smaller the opening, the more in focus your image will be. Think of it as squinting your eyes. The more you squint, the better you can see something. Experimenting with aperture can make your foreground in focus, and background out of focus, or the background in focus and the foreground out of focus.

Often times, F-stops range from f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 etc up to around f/32 or higher, depending on your camera. These numbers determine how small or large your camera's lens opening is and how much light your camera is taking in. The larger the f-stop number, the smaller the aperture and vice versa.

ie: f/1.4 is a larger aperture than f/11. Which means the hole is bigger.

Combinations of aperture and shutter speed can give similar lighting results than another aperture and shutter speed combination.

[cleoent]

Originally Posted by 6i9

Good thread. Also, take into consideration aperture. On SLR cameras, this can be changed by rotating the dial on the lens. On other camera's it may be only controlled by an LCD display.

Aperture is measured in f-stops, which are numbers that represent how large the "opening" of your lens is. The smaller the opening, the more in focus your image will be. Think of it as squinting your eyes. The more you squint, the better you can see something. Experimenting with aperture can make your foreground in focus, and background out of focus, or the background in focus and the foreground out of focus.

Often times, F-stops range from f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 etc up to around f/32 or higher, depending on your camera. These numbers determine how small or large your camera's lens opening is and how much light your camera is taking in. The larger the f-stop number, the smaller the aperture and vice versa.

ie: f/1.4 is a larger aperture than f/11. Which means the hole is bigger.

Combinations of aperture and shutter speed can give similar lighting results than another aperture and shutter speed combination.

Fantastic post!

If you have a lense that has an f-stop as low as 1.4 then you are in good shape to take night pictures. Lens' with low F-stops like 1.4 and 1.8 etc, are sometimes referred to as "fast" lens' because they can take excellent pictures in dim light with faster shutter speeds. They are perfect for indoor parties and even sports.

Thanks for the addition!

[6i9]

Originally Posted by cleoent

Fantastic post!

If you have a lense that has an f-stop as low as 1.4 then you are in good shape to take night pictures. Lens' with low F-stops like 1.4 and 1.8 etc, are sometimes referred to as "fast" lens' because they can take excellent pictures in dim light with faster shutter speeds. They are perfect for indoor parties and even sports.

Thanks for the addition!

Exactly.

[6i9]

I stole these pictures from a website I google'd. (http://www.photoxels.com)

But these pics help illustrate the principles in this thread:


UNDEREXPOSED
Fujifilm FinePix E550
Shutter Speed 1/4 sec., Aperture F2.8, ISO 80


OVEREXPOSED
Fujifilm FinePix E550
Shutter Speed 3 sec., Aperture F2.8, ISO 80


Perfect
Fujifilm FinePix E550
Shutter Speed 3 sec., Aperture F4.0, ISO 80

[cleoent]

they're not showing up

[6i9]

Oops, ate their bandwidth...

FIXED.

[cleoent]

Good examples, now if you could find some pictures with noise as the problem, that would be helpful too.

[6i9]

Ask and you shall recieve:


ISO 50
Shutter speed 1/5
Aperture f/3.2


ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/10
Aperture f/3.2


ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/20
Aperture f/3.2


ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/40
Aperture f/3.2

[Daved]

I think you should have posted this in the parked thread " ** How to Take Better Photos of your Bimmer: A Brief Primer ** ": http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...d.php?t=178447

It's a great post. If you want me to merge it into the thread I mentioned before so it doesn't get lost with the old threads, please PM.

[6i9]

Daved, this thread is more night-photography oriented. The first link is taking pictures in general, not necessarily specifying settings for night shots.. But whatever

[Daved]

Originally Posted by 6i9

Daved, this thread is more night-photography oriented. The first link is taking pictures in general, not necessarily specifying settings for night shots.. But whatever

I know. That's exactly why I think it would be nice to have in the the first thread, because it doesn't cover taking night pics specifically. Anyways it's his thread, so please let him decide if he wants it in the first thread or not.

Let's go back to the topic...

[cleoent]

Daved, thanks for the offer but i think keeping this one seperate would be good, maybe we can let it float for a couple days, or if you want stick it for a few days, then we can merge the two.

I've seen a lot of people taking night shots, I want this to get around to as many people as possible.

[e36]

wow..awesome post..i learned more on this than in the manual.....

thanks,
mike

[cleoent]

Originally Posted by e36

wow..awesome post..i learned more on this than in the manual.....

thanks,
mike

That's good to hear!

[525iT_Feen]

Yea Leo. You and Chris have covered the topic matter very well. I know because everything you two just posted is what I have been working on lately with my own photography. lol. Thanks guys...

[6i9]

Originally Posted by 525iT_Feen

Yea Leo. You and Chris have covered the topic matter very well. I know because everything you two just posted is what I have been working on lately with my own photography. lol. Thanks guys...

Well, there's not really much else you can cover about photography other than these basics. After that, it's mostly experimenting with different lenses/filters. Or, technical things such as direction of light, noisy/neat backgrounds etc. But for the casual car photographer who just wants to take decent shots, these tips should be enough.

[Krieg]

You guys forgot one thing that can make a major diffrence diffrence which is White Balance (WB). I have that FujiFilm Finepix E550 and I can tell you that all the pictures in 6i9 post were not taken with WB set to Auto. Prety sure it was set to Incandescent since that is the best one to use at night on that perticular camera.

[6i9]

Originally Posted by Krieg

You guys forgot one thing that can make a major diffrence diffrence which is White Balance (WB). I have that FujiFilm Finepix E550 and I can tell you that all the pictures in 6i9 post were not taken with WB set to Auto. Prety sure it was set to Incandescent since that is the best one to use at night on that perticular camera.

You're right, I did forget about white balance.

But the pics I provided were set to Programmed Auto. I'm not sure if that camera adjusts WB automatically in that mode, but there was no mention of WB persé in the details under each photo.

Refer:
http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial-ni...otography.html

EDIT: OT, but glad to see this is parked.

[6i9]

More info on lighting and balance, something that's often lacking in night shots:

http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_histogram.html

[cleoent]

Originally Posted by Krieg

You guys forgot one thing that can make a major diffrence diffrence which is White Balance (WB). I have that FujiFilm Finepix E550 and I can tell you that all the pictures in 6i9 post were not taken with WB set to Auto. Prety sure it was set to Incandescent since that is the best one to use at night on that perticular camera.

Good call, thanks!

[intence]

6i9 you are a photography god

[Isaracing]

thank you for the tips!