Any advice / tips on how to take good outdoor photos at night as i seem to be completely useless at it.

What camera are you using?

what are you using to do it.

Basically, get the camera on a tripod with a remote control or cable release. If you have a manual camera loaded with ISO100, try exposures at f9.0 at somewhere between 1 and 4 minutes, depending on ambient light conditions. With a dSLR you have the luxury of reviewing each image, and you can try it with successively longer exposure times.

This was taken on a moonlit night with a low obscured moon at about midnight - there was a considerable amount of urban glow on the low cloud-
http://uploads.netheredge.com/leam_fm/content/bin/images/large/CRW_0391.jpg

f9.0 167s ISO100

If you're using real film you'll need to lengthen exposure times with tight apertures to account for reciprocity failure; think in the 3-10 minute range.

This was taken on a moonlit night with a low obscured moon at about midnight - there was a considerable amount of urban glow on the low cloud-
http://uploads.netheredge.com/leam_fm/content/bin/images/large/CRW_0391.jpg


Think you've posted the wrong image, looks like a caravan and camp fire!

It's a long exposure, taken at night!

Isn't that what we were talking about?

Wow, you must be really observant for a photographer if you didn't know that was long exposure.

There is a good tutorial on night shots here :

http://www.schoolofphotography.com/night/night.html

Keep meaning to go try the Flash bit in section 3 sometime - but the local churchyard is a bit scary @ night. Also the running round with the flashgun seems too much like excercise to me :P

It really depends on what you're shooting.

If you're taking photos of people, most digital cameras have a night mode that uses a combination of flash to illuminate the people in the foreground, and a longer than normal exposure to capture some of the darker background.

If you're shooting something like a sunset, then a tripod can help, but often you can get decent results just by turning off the auto-flash and doing it hand-held. This sunset shot (http://www.flickr.com/photos/martynjames/139099432/in/set-72057594123180152/) was handheld from a moving boat and is still pretty sharp.

And finally if the subject of the shot itself is dark but too far away to use the flash, you can use a long exposure on a tripod. eg. this one of boats moving on a river (http://www.flickr.com/photos/martynjames/282740579/in/set-72157594250055438/) was 30 seconds on a tripod with no flash.

It's worth experimenting with the different settings your camera has, and if you don' have a tripod, try resting the camera on a still surface to take the shot.

Tripod and cable release/self timer are essential and keep the ISO down as low as your camera will go. I do a lot of early morning/late evening photography around the Peak District and use shutter speeds of 2 or 3 seconds but my manfrotto proB tripod is rigid and I get very sharp results.

www.peak-photos.co.uk

you think a digital camera is good enough to take night shots? as in like a sony cybershot or canon ixus?