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Night Photography Tips

Equipment

Whilst I am a firm believer that it is the photographer that makes good photos not the equipment, night photography makes demands that are so outside the bounds of everyday camera usage that this is one case where good equipment choice is essential.

If you are going to have a serious stab at night photography then get yourself a camera up to the job. After much research I opted for a Canon 20D (they can be picked up on eBay very reasonably) with a Canon 10-22mm ultra-wide angle lens and I haven't been disappointed with the performance of either. I also purchased a Canon TC-80N3 remote cable release and timer unit - expensive but well worth it.

Blur and Shake

Depending upon your particular shot, try to keep the tripod as short as possible to help reduce vibrations and keep things steady. If there is any wind at all then detach the camera strap - it is painful watching the wind pick up halfway through a shot and watching the camera strap flapping around and banging into the tripod. Similarly, if your cable release won't reach the ground then make sure it won't bang into the tripod if things get frisky.

Focus

Focusing in darkness can be very difficult when you start out. My first few attempts involved switching to manual and rolling the focus ring around as far as it would go, but this will actually focus past infinity and into blurry hell.

Check the manual that came with your lens and make sure you understand how to focus on infinity reliably - it generally comes down to setting the focus marker where the infinity markings begin, not where they end. Or just do it by hand - looking through the viewfinder you should be able to find a sweet spot where the stars don't blur at all. Most of all it just takes a bit of practice.

Composition

You would think it would be hard to compose a shot in near pitch blackness but by using all the camera has to offer you can make things a lot easier. My technique is simple, just crank the ISO setting up to 3200 (or as high as you can go on your camera) and you can get away with exposures in the range of a few seconds (or tens of seconds) to give you a clear enough picture of the scene to work with. With a bit of practice you can do these hand held and work a view as you would in daylight.

Exposure

I have yet to over-expose a night photograph, and I have had a number of nice shots ruined by being heavily under-exposed. It is hard when the night is getting on and bed seems like a much better idea than photography to force yourself to take the necessary time. Down this road rolls disappointment - your beautiful images needing so much post-processing that they are unprintable.

When working around dusk don't forget how quickly things get dark, and that there are many levels of darkness. Things may seem just as dark as thirty minutes ago but in fact the light may have dropped so much that you need another ten minutes on each shot just to keep the same exposure. The human eye is very good as compensating for changes in lighting levels - beware.

It is meaningless to talk about particular exposures other than to recommend you use the lowest ISO setting (although ISO 200 still seems fine on my Canon 20D). Working around dusk you can get away with a few seconds exposure, with the sun well gone you will be needing a few minutes, with moonlight you can get away with a few minutes also and in near pitch blackness be prepared to wait up to an hour. Practice practice practice.

If you are taking test shots at ISO 3200 then you can use these to do rough and ready exposure calculations - if 30 seconds at ISO 3200 is giving you the right kind of image (apart from the noise!) then you will be looking at around 15 minutes at ISO 100. When working when the night is young don't forget that light levels are constantly dropping and add extra time to account for this.

Location and timing

Even more so than with normal daylight photography, the overall direction of your shots is an important compositional consideration and often limitation.

If you want a picture of a monument with circular star trails behind it then you have no choice about your placement - you have to be South of the monument and looking North - and if North happens to be where a large city sits on the horizon throwing an orange glow up into the heavens then you need to think again.

Think about your shots before hand to work out what will work best in your particular environment. A good example would be the Island on which I live - to the South we have a hundred miles of light pollution free sea and skies, whilst to the North are two of the largest cities on the south coast of England. These facts have a direct impact on what is and isn't possible.

The Moon

Whilst moonless nights are be best if you want the darkest skies, a nice full or near full moon can flood a landscape with enough light to give the effect of a near daylight landscape at the same time as star trails in the skies. Keep in mind that you need the moon to be out of shot by quite a margin to keep it from flooding out your star trails and that with ultra-wide lenses this can be tricky.

There is a whole world of moonlit landscape photography that I haven't even begun to explore yet, but can product stunning images thanks to the more diffuse way that moonlight illuminates a landscape when compared to direct sunlight.