7 thoughts on “Night Photography is Hard”

  3. postbear

    i’ll ditto rod, with a few notes. tripods are pretty much a must, sure, but you can improvise – lean up against something solid and hold your breath – holding down the shutter and concentrating on being immobile will destroy a lot of shots (so if it’s important, use the tripod), but you’ll learn the invaluable skill of staying still. that’ll come in handy when you have no tripod and have to shoot something in very low light. your body will naturally assume the proper position and it’ll be instinct. i know you’re shooting without filters right now, and for night shooting, keep them off if you do buy some. long exposures plus filters equals a mess (unless it’s a star filter, in which case, exposures of one minute or more mean you win a unicorn and a trip in a sealed boxcar to a special camp).

    rod suggesting you use iso 100 is designed to limit the grain (right, rod?), but if you want chunky grain for aesthetic reasons, push the film speed all you like. blown up large, you wind up with huge seurat-like photographs that i quite like, more so with shots in dusk rather than full night, in my opinion. you can mimic that in photoshop to some degree, but it’s also good to play with these settings purely so you learn what they are and can then adapt to your environment. and don’t listen to me, i’m useless at techy detail stuff.

  5. Deadrobot

    Thank you, Sylvie. Coming from you that means a lot!

    Cheers Rod, all what you said is pretty alien to me still (and SharkBoy) but we’re trying. Every site I’ve been to says the same about the tripod.

  6. Photog2

    I like the laneway quite a bit. Hints (that took me many many years to discover myself)? Tripod + Av set to around F/8 (little refraction) or more (f/22 or so will give you stars where there are lights) and if doing the Av doesn’t expose the shot properly, try M and adjust the shutter speed until you get the right amount of light. I would also set the ISO to 100 and the IS to OFF.

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