Shooting in low light is really fun once you get comfortable with the technical side of things. So how do you take night photography with your point and shoot camera? Here are 6 simple steps to improve your night shots.
1. Well, the first thing I make sure I have is a tripod. Having a tripod is a must if you’re going to shoot low light or night photography because you’re only going to get blurred images if trying to handhold your camera.
2. Next, I switch the program mode to Manual mode.
On my Canon SD1100, the manual mode isn’t really much of a manual mode because you cannot change the aperture or shutter speed independently like you can on an SLR camera. The only thing you can do is pick a longer shutter speed between 1 second and 15 seconds, which is fine because I rarely use shutter speeds longer than 15 seconds anyway. This camera will set the aperture automatically to f2.8, the widest aperture possible on this camera, but unfortunately you cannot change it. Don’t worry, you’re still good. I know of one REALLY technical way to make your Canon point and shoot camera truly manual but it only works on certain Canon models. It’s a Canon camera hack called CHDK. You install it in your camera settings. At the time of this writing, the newest camera it works on is the Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, which is why I got it. Actually, I haven’t really used CHDK all that much because the standard settings have been all I need. But it is nice to have the option just in case you do want to go fully manual.
To get back to the point of why I set the camera to Manual mode (I always go off on these wide tangents) is because the Automatic mode changes all your settings to whatever it thinks is best. So if you shoot in Automatic mode, it will change the ISO and flash settings to screw up what you had set up before. The Manual mode will keep all the settings you set up to stay current for every shot.
3. The next thing I do is to go into my camera settings and change the ISO to the lowest it can go.
For my Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, an ISO of 80 is the lowest I can set. I set it as low as it can go because the lower the ISO, the less ‘noise’ you have in your images. Noise is the digital equivalent of a grainy image if you’re shooting with film. For me, I don’t like to see any noise in my digital photos because it just doesn’t look good. If shooting with film, sometimes having a grainy image is kind of cool. But I think the digital grain (noise) and film grain are two different things. For some reason, digital grain just doesn’t look as cool as film grain, so I just try to avoid it as much as possible. So when shooting in digital, keep the ISO as low as possible, just a preference of mine. The night shot with the moon below was shot at 200 ISO but does has a lot of noise if shown at a larger scale. By the way, the moon was digitally added in Photoshop Elements later. In the original, the moon was to the right more and smaller. Below is the original and final version.
Tip: Be sure to use your tripod in low light level situations when using a low ISO like 80. The lower the ISO, the more time (longer shutter speed) is needed to create the image. The longer the shutter speed, the more sensitive the camera is to blurry images. So use that tripod to keep the camera still.
The reason I set my ISO in the beginning is because there have been times when I shot a bunch of stuff then afterwards realized I forgot to check what ISO I shot with. And sure enough it was set at 800, which looked good on my camera’s LCD screen but on the computer I could see a lot of noise. So that’s why I check in the beginning so it’s not a wasted shoot.
4. After I have my ISO set, I turn off the flash.
I do this when shooting landscapes or anything besides people. You don’t need the flash because it only illuminates for a few feet anyway and there’s nothing immediately in front of the camera to capture, it’s all far away. It’s funny to see this at sporting events at night, like the Super Bowl halftime show. When the stadium is dark during the show, you can see thousands of camera flashes going off. I realize most people just have their cameras set to Automatic and they don’t have a tripod but as a photographer it’s something I get a little chuckle from. (Alright, that’s enough of my flash rant.)
Although, I’ll turn on the flash if I do want to photograph people and want to capture a low lit background. So when the flash goes off, I have the people stay very still because even though the flash went off, the shutter is still open and capturing the background. Usually the shutter is open for a second after the flash went off to really capture the low light levels in the background and make it brighter in the shot.
5. Most of the time I will keep the white balance set to Daylight.
For me, it keeps everything looking natural, like shooting with daylight balanced film. I tend to like the different color casts that are captured from different types of lights that are on at night.
6. Prevent camera shake by using your self timer to delay the shutter from going off immediately. The camera’s sensor is sensitive because the shutter is going to be open longer which means there’s more potential for blurry images if the camera moves. You can get a blurry image just from pressing your shutter button too hard and making your camera shake a little, even if it’s securely on your tripod. Since most compact digital cameras don’t have a remote control or cable release option to prevent this, go into your camera’s self timer settings and create a custom countdown, I use 5 seconds. My camera has preset times of either 2 seconds or 10 seconds which is either too quick or too long to wait for the camera to take a shot. So on my Canon, there’s a setting to create a custom countdown.
So to recap here’s the quick checklist before taking that after sunset shot.
- Use a tripod.
- Switch to Manual mode.
- Set the ISO to the lowest it can go.
- Turn off the flash.
- Set the white balance to Daylight.
- Use your self timer.
Have fun!
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