“Dark” is the term I use to describe true nightscape photography, which is mostly about the lights and the reflection of the lights. For shooting in the dark things like wide apertures and image stabilization generally don’t matter: the shot is going to require a long exposure no matter the aperture and ISO. A solid tripod is going to be necessary and other techniques to minimize shake help keep the images sharp. With shutter speeds slow to between 1/30 and 1/2 second, it’s also a good idea to enable mirror lock-up, which avoids the bit of vibration caused by the mirror slapping back and forth) and to use a cable release or the camera’s self-timer, which avoids motion from pressing the shutter button. That said, significantly longer exposures generally don’t benefit as much, because the effects of both don’t tend to last long.

FDR Drive – NYC
13sec @ f/22 – ISO 400 – Focal Length 10mm

What I found most counter intuitive about night photography is that you don’t want to shoot at a wide aperture. Rather f/8 to f1/16 is preferable if at all possible. The reason for this is twofold. First, it’s difficult to focus at night, and a smaller aperture gives a greater depth of field, keeping more of the picture in focus and giving you more margin for error. Second, narrower apertures (f/11-f/16) give light sources a “starburst” effect and thus much more emphasis, while wider apertures (f/4-f/5.6) leave the lights a bit muddled. (They’re going to overexpose and lose all detail anyway.) The two below photos here are a good example. The top image was shot at f/4, and the bottom at f/11. Notice how much cleaner the lights are in the second image. Similarly, a lower ISO results in less noise, and since noise is usually a problem with long exposures an ISO of 200 is often ideal.

Photo by: Roger Cicala @ LensRentals.com

Determining exposure time is the most difficult part of night shooting. Setting the autoexposure to “spot” and trying to expose for reflected light is a good solution— when it works. This will blow out the center of bright lights (which usually looks fine) but will bring out the most color and detail in most shots. You can use a lightmeter, all manner of calculations, etc. to try to determine exposure, but the simplest technique I’ve found is set up the tripod, take a two-second exposure, and look at the histogram of the resulting shot, doubling or halving the exposure time until the image on the LCD looks good. (Yes, all of you purists, I realize this is chimping and cheating. But it lets me get home with a shot.)

FDR Drive – NYC
30sec @ f/13 – ISO 100 – Focal Length 10mm

IAC Building – NYC
2sec @ f/10 – ISO 100 – Focal Length 13mm

As mentioned earlier, focusing can be problematic at night. If the interesting objects are fairly close you may be able to get focus lock using the camera or flash’s built in IR focusing light. Another option is to light an object in the scene with a flashlight, let the camera autofocus and then switch to manual focus. Both of these techniques require objects of interest to be reasonablly close. Other options are to set your lens on manual focus and arbitrarily use the distance scale, manually focus using live view, or set the lens at its hyperfocal distance. The latter technique is what I prefer when using wide to medium angle lenses.

FDR Drive tunnel – NYC
8sec @ f/36 – ISO 100 – Focal Length 210mm (Exposure Bias +1 step)

Brooklyn Bridge – NYC
15sec @ f/9 – ISO 100 – Focal Length 55mm

It can be a little frustrating, especially at first, when you get home with 100 images and find only 4 or 6 are really any good— but those 4 or 6 will give some unique photographs that are truly different and often beautiful. That bridge shot above shows a soybean field, a dirty stained bridge, and the abandoned Pyramid by day. By night, though, its pretty cool. Once you get a little comfortable with getting night images, there’s a number of cool techniques to add: light painting; star trails; abstracts and anything else you can think of.

text by: Roger Cicala

Meet Packing District – NYC
6sec @ f/18 – ISO 100 – Focal Length 10mm

jmartinez x Golden Gate – SF
5sec @ f/5.6 – ISO 100 – Focal Length 20mm

you can Browse some long exposure photos @ my Flickr account.

j.martinez

by the way, Thanks for the feedback – I will try update this more consistently. Any suggestion is more than welcome!

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