Taking Photos At Night

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

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 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 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.

http://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?