Just when the sun has set and
you thought it was safe to go back to the couch after a hard day of
shooting, suddenly night falls and a whole new world of subjects is
illuminated. From the jack-o-lanterns on your neighbor’s front step to
the bright lights of Broadway to the neon signs at the local diner, the
night is full of color and light and all you need to capture it is a
tripod, a lot of memory card space and a pioneering spirit.
Finding nighttime and low-light subjects is pretty easy and even
ordinary things you might not notice during the day can become quite
interesting after dark—simple things like walk lights and even the
local fast food joint are all worthwhile design ideas. If you want to
get a little more adventurous and add motion to the nighttime mix,
things like traffic patterns and carnival rides can turn into
extraordinary images when combined with a long exposure. In summertime,
almost every town and city has an annual fireworks display that
provides great opportunities for night shots. And if you’re really
ambitious, you can create your own light and motion pictures with
things like sparklers or flashlights.
In the tutorials below I’ll introduce you to some of the very simple
tips & techniques involved in shooting pictures after dark and I’ll
also talk about the specifics of some common after-dark subjects. To learn a lot more about night exposures and all types of exposures, be sure to see my new bestselling book Exposure Photo Workshop (Wiley; 2008).
Ferris Wheel at Night
Neon Motel Sign
Neon Diner Sign, Norwalk, Connecticut
Basic Consideration: High ISO vs. Long Expoures?
Almost every time I take a night or low-light photograph I ask myself
the same question: Should I use a longer exposure time and keep
the ISO low to get better image quality, or should I raise the ISO so I
can use shorter exposure times. The fact is that both higher ISO
settings and long exposure times both lead to increased image noise, so
it’s really half a dozen of one and six of the other. I really don’t
mind noise in night photos, so I tend to give that issue minimal
consideration (there are also some very good noise-reduction software
programs available if you find that noise is affecting image quality).
Noise tends to be more obvious with smaller-sensor cameras with high
pixel counts--it's one of the prices you pay for having a lot of pixels
on a small sensor. After all, noise is just that: digital interference
from other nearby pixels: the closer they are and the more there are,
the more noise you're going to get. This is why professional cameras
often use full-frame CMOS sensors: larger pixels, better noise
cancellation.
Your real primary consideration should be subject motion. Since you
will be using a tripod a lot of the time (you will, won’t you?), camera
movement won’t be an issue. Subject motion, however, is always a
consideration. If you want to freeze action as much as possible, then
shifting to a higher ISO will buy you a few more stops of shutter
speed. On the other hand, very often exaggerating the motion of
nightlights (traffic streaks, fireworks, carnival rides) is a desirable
thing and so using a slow ISO and a longer shutter speed is a good
working combination. So, for me, the larger questions are always: Is
there motion here and do how do I want to capture it?
There will be times when you’re shooting without a tripod and you will
be forced to raise the IS0, so go ahead and raise it. I had to raise
the ISO to 1600 to photograph the famous Rose window in Notre Dame
(9-04) because I was already using the fastest lens I had with me and
tripods aren’t allowed, so I simply had no choice. The image isn’t as
sharp as I would like, but in situations like this I always feel it’s
better to raise the ISO and suffer some digital noise than to simply
stop shooting.
Regardless of whether you're increasing the ISO or using subject
motion (as opposed to you intentionally jiggling the camera--which is
perfectly acceptable if that's what you're after) as a part of the
image, I still highly recommend using a tripod at night. A tripod opens
up the entire range of shutter speed and aperture combinations and no
anti-shake technology does that. (And by the way, in most cases
when you use a tripod it's better to shut off your anti-shake
system if you can.) Buy a tripod!
Creative Night Photography Technique: Neon signs
Neon signs are one of my absolute favorite
subjects—they’re bright, they’re colorful and a lot of them are very
retro looking which I find fascinating. Photographing neon is
incredibly simple because your matrix meter reading is usually very
accurate and you can be off by a stop or two and you’ll still get great
photos. Most neon sings are also bright enough to shoot handheld if you
bump the ISO up to 400 or 800 and turn on the image stabilization.
Personally I prefer to use a tripod and shoot at the lowest ISO
available, but not everyone is nuts enough to haul a tripod with them
to Las Vegas.
One strange little phenomenon you might notice as you photograph neon
is that the halation from the tubes will grow or contract based partly
on exposure time and the aperture you’re using (I tend to use a small
aperture of f/22 or smaller, mostly to keep everything in sharp focus).
If you see too much of a glow, or too little, try altering your
aperture (and your exposure time) and see if it cleans up the image a
bit. Also, while I always take an overall shot of the sign, I also take
various close-ups and try to create interesting abstract designs from
the sign. Since the sign is just sitting there and digital pictures are
free, I usually shoot at least several dozen images from different
angles and distances, bracketing exposures if I’m not sure how the glow
is being recorded. I spent about 20 minutes taking about 50 or 60 shots
of the casino sign shown here.
Creative Technique: Zooming
If you're looking for a fun way to add a twist
to your night shots,
consider the old "zooming" technique that was so popular back in the
film SLR days. It's a simple technique and with digital, of course, you
can see the results of your experiments right away. The technique is
simple: just set a relatively long exposure (at least 1/15th second)
and then zoom the lens from one extreme to the other during the
exposure. Of course, the longer the exposure time the more time you
have to experiment wiht zoom speed and whether or not you want to use
the entire zoom range or just a part of it.
I
shot this last summer in Times Square around midnight on a Saturday
night. I used a zoom lens (18-70mm Nikkor) and rested the camera on a
construction barrier while I zoomed the lens (tele-to-wide) for about a
half second at f/13. You can really vary the effect by changing the
speed of the "racking" of the zoom and whether you start at the tele or
wide range (for some reason that makes quite a difference). Also, if
you pause or jiggle the camera, you can get some cool effects. Yes,
this is about a 1968 effect :) but it's still fun, especially when you
have a subject like Times Square.
There's really no way to predict how your images will turn out and
often you get little surprises that you can't anticipate. If you look
at the left front edge of the Times Square photo, for example, you can
read the "Mamma Mia" sign very clearly. That happened because I must
have paused long enough at that particular portion of the frame to
register the sign sharply. I also like that you can see faces in the
streaks of light (look at the lower left) if you look carefully.
Living Statue of Liberty, Times Square
Use the Night Portrait Mode
If your camera has a selection of "scene modes" one of them is probably the "night portrait mode." Much like other scene-specific night-exposure modes (the night landscape or night scenes mode, for example) the night portrait mode (typically indicated by a silhouette of a head with a star above it) sets a longer-than-normal shutter speed, but it also combines that longish exposure with a burst from your built-in flash. The purpose of this dual manipulation of the exposure is so that you can, for example, photograph a person standing in front of an artificially lit scene and record both the face and the background in a nice balance.
I photographed this “living” Statue of Liberty in Times Square around midnight on a hot and crowded July night and used the night-portrait mode to create a nice balance between her (actually, I think it was a him in the costume) and the bright lights of Broadway. Yes, I could have done this with more precision (though I think my Nikon D70s did a great job wiht the built-in flash) with accessory flash unit and some more tinkering with flash exposure, but by that time I would have lost my subject. This was a shot made rather quickly and I gave the subject $5 to pose for me for a few moments and so I used the night portrait mode to create the flash/ambient balance for me. Don't be afraid to experiment with night modes, they often provide a quick solution to complex night situations.
For a step-by-step tutorial on how to make sparkler photos, click the photo.
