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Night PhotographyNight photography can be very challenging but it can also be very rewarding. You can find yourself up late, in cold conditions and far from home, yet a night shot that really works can be spectacular. I have a number of night photos that I have posted on the Panoramio website and would like to share a few tips that might be helpful to people who are new to photography.Night photography can be as easy as using the camera on your mobile phone to photograph city lights. That’s ok if you are taking pictures just for fun but if you want to take a shot that would look good on your wall then (at the time of this writing at least) you need to invest in the right equipment. 
EquipmentTo take great night-time photos, I would recommend an SLR style camera. If you are a beginner then I would recommend a digital SLR. Compact cameras are light and easy to use but SLR style cameras are much more versatile and have features that allow you to take better night-time photos.SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras use high-quality lenses. SLR cameras also allow you to swap lenses, so you can attach telescopic lenses to your camera (good for wild life photography). When buying a lens for night photography, try to get a high quality 'fast' lens i.e. one that is rated with the lowest f value. So a lens rated at f2 is better than one rated at f4. What makes an SLR camera great for night photography is that you can attach them to a tripod. (An SLR camera should have a place to screw the tripod to the camera underneath it). Being able to attach a tripod allows you to take time-lapse photographs. Also an SLR camera should have a manual exposure setting that allows you to manually set the aperture and time of exposure. As technology moves on, compact cameras are increasing in quality. So you may well be able to use a good compact camera to take night time photos but make sure that it can be attached to a tripod and that it has a night setting. However you will probably find that most compact cameras lack the flexibility of the 'B' bulb and/or 'M' manual setting that comes with an SLR. You will need a sturdy tripod for night photography. A tripod holds the camera steady for long periods of time and that is something that even the steadiest pair of hands is not able to do. Unless you have to carry your tripod in a back pack, I would recommend that you get a strong and stable tripod (one that will not shake in the breeze). Make your choice carefully, ask if you can try adjusting it before you buy it to get a feel for what it will be like to use. To avoid camera shake, use the self timer or a remote shutter release. If you have an older camera then you might need a shutter release cable. It can also be handy to carry a penlight or torch, for astro photography, get a red colored light if you can, since a white light spoils ‘night vision’. Lens cleaning equipment comes in handy if there is condensation on the lens but never use anything abrasive to clean your lenses or you will ruin the special layer of coating on it. It's a good idea to carry a spare set of rechargeable batteries for digital cameras, especially for night photography since the batteries will drain much faster. You might also like to get a laptop with an SD card reader to review the images on location. Make sure the laptop has a battery with a long life. You can also tweak the power saving settings on the laptop to help with this. Film vs Digital CamerasIf you want to make large poster size prints of your photographs (at the time I write this), then film can still be better than digital (but digital is catching up) but if you just want to put up a few images on the net or make smaller prints then a 10 or 6 mega-pixel camera is adequate for that. If you want to make large prints then get a camera with the largest number of mega-pixels that you can afford.However if you have a motorized telescope and want to photograph very faint astronomical objects then I think that film (or a high quality CCD) would still be the way to go (since batteries will quickly run out on a digital camera and digital images are ‘noisy’ for long exposures in low light situations). Of course with film the longer the exposure the less accurate the color balance will be so you may need to correct for this. With digital the effect of 'hot pixels' (colored spots) becomes a problem with longer exposures but you can correct for this by taking a photo with the lens cap on to create an image that can then be used to subtract from the noisy image. Take this blank image just after your time exposure and use the same exposure time to get an accurate blank. For more on hot pixels, do a search on 'hot pixels' or visit www.mediachance.com for a utility that you can download. Even if you love film and can’t bear the thought of going to digital, a digital camera with a large LCD screen is good to use to test exposure settings. You could take a quick shot with your digital to get the exposure settings right and then take the final shot with your film camera. Night Photography TechniquesDon’t just take one photograph of the same scene, but experiment with different aperture and exposure settings, (especially if you are using a digital camera that has plenty of memory).Set your camera to the manual exposure setting. Manually adjust the aperture and exposure time settings. Don't be afraid to experiment with extremely long exposure times (10-30 seconds or longer) even if your light meter suggests the image will be overexposed. With a digital camera you can view the results on the LCD screen but allow for the fact that in dark conditions the LCD screen can make the image look brighter than it would be if it were printed. Wider angle lenses (50mm or less) can be better for night photography in very dark conditions since telescopic lenses tend to let in less light and it is harder to get them in focus. On some cameras the built in light meter appears as a digital readout that is visible as you look through the viewfinder giving you a + or - value to indicate whether the picture will be under or overexposed, with night photography you can use this as a base guide but because of the wide range of lighting conditions this will not be absolutely reliable. I keep my iso setting to 100 unless I want to photograph a moving object or very faint stars since a larger iso setting results in a grainy image. I use the narrowest aperture setting that I can get away with, the larger the f stop value the smaller the aperture (i.e. f22 is narrower f8). The smaller the aperture the wider the range of the field of focus, that means that more of the image will be in sharp focus. A wide field of focus can be very helpful if the auto focus is not working. However if the available lighting is bright (e.g. Christmas lights/ flood lit stadiums), and focusing is not a problem, you may want to use a lower f value (e.g. f5) for artistic effect. With night photography there is a wide range of lighting conditions, while the eye will automatically adjust, the camera is not as versatile and our mind is also able to fill in blanks and ignores irrelevant information, you will often not notice this until you are looking at the your printed image, so experience helps. If the scene has a wide range of lighting conditions you can bracket your shots by taking several photos using the tripod and without moving the camera just change the exposure setting. Say there is a streetlight in your photo and a dark patch of lawn as well. You could try a braket of 1/2 second, 5 seconds and 30 seconds. You can use the long exposure to bring out the detail in the dark areas but the street light will have a burn out effect and erode detail in the area immediately surrounding it. The short exposure is for the street lights. You can then use a program like Adobe Photoshop or The Gimp to combine the set of images photos as separate layers with the overexposed layer on top of the underexposed layer and (using the wand tool with feathering enabled) select and delete the burnt out effect (you may need to do some other editing to make the picture look natural). Photoshop techniques are outside the scope of this article but there should be plenty of information available on that if you do a search on the web. Auto vs Manual focusIf the Auto focus is working, fine, use that but if not then the manual focus is what is needed. You can check the sharpness of your image after you take your photograph by reviewing the image on the LCD screen and by using the zoom function to check the sharpness of the image. A laptop computer with a card reader may also be useful to view at 100%. The larger the print/image you want to make, the further you should be able to zoom in and still see a sharp image. Five times zoom is ok for small to medium prints. Point the camera at a the brightest object you can find that is about the same distance from your subject and use the auto focus to get the right focus then switch to manual but be careful not to bump or touch the lens. If there is no bright object at the right distance then you will have to adjust it manually using your eye through the viewfinder.Another method of manual focusing is to use a depth of field table. (I found that link on page 102 of the November 2007 issue of Digital SLRUser) TipsAs the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect”, take lots of photos and try different things. Don’t be happy with your first shot; keep asking yourself, “How can I improve on this?” Look at the work of other photographers and ask yourself “What would I need to do to take a picture like that?”Take photos under various weather conditions; don’t go home if it’s cloudy or raining, city lights reflect off of clouds giving a glow to the sky and wet roads and paving reflect lights. Blue skies are nice but everyone takes pictures of blue skies and a clear sky does not reflect the red light of sunset and rainbows don’t appear in a clear sky, so be different and turn different conditions into an advantage. Slight mist can give a good effect but too much mist will wash out a picture, by the time it ends up as a print the mist effect will be strongly exaggerated. The difference between an ok photograph and a great one can be a matter of 15 minutes. Just waiting for that ray of light to appear from behind the cloud or the sky to turn that more intense shade of red or for golden light to reflect off a window can make all the difference, so be patient. A full moon can add extra light and add a mysterious feel to your shots if there are intermittent clouds in the sky. Look for places to photograph cityscapes from across lakes and rivers; still water can be like a mirror and almost double the amount of lighting in the shot. Take photos at twilight to get interesting colors as well as city and streetlights. Above all don’t be afraid to try different ideas. Well, I hope this has been helpful and that you take some great shots.
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