Tips for Night and Available light photography

How many times have we tried to take picture of that beautiful monument dazzling with lights and shining in the moon light at night only to find the results quite mediocre; often blurred images which are either under exposed or blown out.

Photography at night is a very interesting and special form of photography that needs some understanding of (1) your photo gear and (2) some simple laws of physics.

Over last 3 months that I have used a DSLR, I have learnt some very important lessons in this topic, which I am going to share with this post. Some of the tips will be helpful to folks using a P&S camera also, but largely, it is based on a DSLR use.

Tip 1- Tripod, tripod and tripod: Tripod is mandatory as you will be shooting with very slow shutter speeds - sometimes in the 20 and 30 second duration.

Unless you cover yourself with a coat of Plaster of Paris and make a statue of yourself, you will need a tripod to keep the camera still over long exposures.

If you do not have a tripod, make or find a stable place where you can rest your camera away from your hands.

Tip 2- Cable Release: This is again to prevent the camera shake. I do not have a cable release, but I have seen my friends use it all the time and it works great.

If you own a Canon EOS series camera and are the techie creative sorts, you make one for yourself in less than INR 100 by following the DIY tips here:

http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?p=20

Tip 3- Mirror Lock-Up: This is a feature that not many people having DSLRs know and use. It's a neat little feature hidden in the "Custom Menu". What this does is that it flips open the mirror when you first press the shutter and opens the shutter on the second press.

The idea is to let the mirror fly up and get set before you open the shutter. May not sound very helpful, but when dealing with extra long exposures, such small things matter.

Tip 4- Know the "sweet spot" of your lens: I use the kit lens, and it is best between f/8 and f/11. If its opened up further, pictures may lack contrast at the same time if its closed, pictures may suffer from "Chromatic Aberrations" - it is nothing but the blue / purple fringing that we see around the borders. You can read about Chromatic Aberrations and Dispersion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration

Tip 5- Focus using the "Center" focus point: Auto focus mechanism needs contrast to focus. Center focus point is the most sensitive amongst all and thus more suited in low light low contrast focusing.

Tip 6- Go MF: This is if tip 5 fails to give you good focus, switch to manual focus mode and adjust the focus yourself. Setting up the focus to infinity also works well.

Tip 7- Stick to ISO 100-200: This is contrary to what many say. Higher the ISO, higher the grain (noise) in the picture. We can use a noise reduction software, but the price we pay is loss of sharpness. If possible, stick to ISO 100-200 and increase the exposure duration.

Tip 8- Buy a fast lens: My kit lens opens up to f5.6 @ 50mm. Imagine shooting at f1.8 @ 50mm would give you a difference of roughly 4 stops. If you needed 30 seconds @ 5.6, now you can get the same result at 5-8 seconds @ 1.8

Wow.....I managed to jot down so many tips....!! These are coming from my discussion with fellow photographers on Flickr that you can read here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/canonxt/discuss/72157601944105621/

Tip 9- Use RAW mode: This helps as you have full control over white balance which may get messed up in night shots where there are multiple forms of lights.

Tip 10- Keep a torch handy: OK, this tip has nothing to with photography, but always keep a torch handy. It helps when you are standing on the roof of your building in pitch darkness and you cant see the settings on your camera. Canon EOS cameras have a build in illuminator that lights up the display panel, but I prefer torch over that.

Hope you enjoy reading these tips. I would love to read your comments. Please share any low light photography tips that you may have.

Ciaos