Night-time Photography Archives - Infrared Conversions, IR Modifications & Photography Tutorials

Street photography is a great genre of photography to practice in. If done well the images you capture can tell amazing stories. The great thing about street photography is that most people can do it without having to travel too far and it doesn’t require as much equipment as say landscape photography. While street photography during the day can be tricky, at night it becomes much more difficult. The combination of low light and handholding a camera can play havoc with your settings and the sharpness of your images. Fear, not here are 7 tips to help you capture better street photos at night.

Avoid using a flash

The first bit of advice that I can give you is to not use your flash. Unless you are experienced with using lights and have proper lighting set up, a flash will make your photos look worse. The harsh light will wash out the scene and you’ll end with photos that look like family snaps from point and shoot cameras. If you are going to use a flash, get yourself a diffuser so that it softens the light a little. You might be better off using LED lights instead of a flash. These are relatively inexpensive and can be placed off-camera without the need for triggers. They will allow a bit more creativity as to your lighting.

Get your settings correct

A big part of street photography at night is ensuring that you capture images that are not blurred. I say “not blurred” because your street photos at night don’t necessarily have to be pin-sharp as they might need to be during the day. But an acceptable level of sharpness can be difficult to achieve in night photography without a tripod. The first unavoidable thing that you will need to do is to increase your ISO. You simply will not be able to avoid doing this if you are shooting handheld at night. Depending on the scene you may need to select a very high ISO, but that will depend on the scene, your camera and your ability to hold a camera steady. You’ll also need to select a wide aperture (f/4.5 or wider) to allow enough light to come into the camera.

Acceptable level of blurriness

As mentioned above, for night street photography there is an acceptable level of blurriness that you can expect in your shots. Unless you are using models and lighting equipment, no one is expecting pin-sharp photos at night. But the level of blurriness will come down to the subject you are photographing. For example, a portrait of someone needs to be sharper than a street scene where people are walking. So try to concentrate on finding interesting scenes and compositions rather than fretting over the sharpness of your images. Night street photography is as much about capturing the mood and feeling of a place as it is about the technical perfection of the shot.

This image is too blurred.

You will need some light

Your biggest challenge in night photography will be the limited light available. So try to find places where there is a source of light. That might be a street lamp, a shop window of even headlights from a car. The great thing is that in cities there are light sources everywhere so you can easily find places to compose your image around. Try to compose your image around the light source either as a focal point of your shot or as lighting for your subject. Also, be on the lookout for the colours of lights on show which can often look great at night. For example, a red glow on the ground from shop lights can give a wonderful photo.

Should you use a tripod?

In short, yes, of course, you can use a tripod. It comes down to the type of photo you want to capture. A tripod will mean you can set a long shutter speed without having to worry about the sharpness of your image. But this will give you a completely different photo than one that uses a fast shutter speed. With a slow shutter speed, you will capture light trails from cars and motion blur from people moving whereas a fast shutter speed will freeze the action. So it will come down to the type of shot you want to capture as to whether you use a tripod or not.

Shoot from the hip

This is a technique that you can use for street photography during the day as well. It involves having your settings selected and shooting without composing your shot by looking through the viewfinder. You would simply point the camera and shoot and hope that you have captured the scene correctly. If done well you can capture some great angles and shots that look completely natural and authentic. But the danger is you’ll miss your point of interest completely and focus on something in the background instead due to your shallow depth of field. For this reason, my suggestion would be to set your camera to autofocus if you are shooting from the hip. I would also recommend setting your camera to burst mode. Ensure you take plenty of memory cards as you’ll rattle through them quickly if shooting in burst mode.

Be careful

Needless to say that anyone walking around with expensive camera equipment at night should be careful. Use your common sense as to where and who you photograph and try to avoid walking around with lots of gear. The more understated that you can be the safer you’ll be. If you are using a tripod, be aware of where you have put your backpack.

Nighttime street photography can yield wonderful results. But it will take patience and practice to perfect as the conditions are not easy. The main thing to remember is to ensure your shutter speed will be just fast enough to capture an acceptable level of sharpness. This will no doubt mean raising your ISO to be able to get a good exposure. Use the tips above next time you are taking night street photos and see if it helps you capture better photos.

Imagine that one perfect moment about to unfold before your very eyes. The bride and groom meet, their smiles barely contained. You raise your camera, wait for just the right composition, and click open the shutter. To the naked eye, this frame in time couldn’t look any better. Unfortunately, you didn’t bother to check any of your camera settings and the photo is dark, dull, blurred, and barely viewable. How can you avoid this blunder? Night-time event photography can be incredibly difficult for even a trained professional, so there’s no shame in realizing that you need to incorporate a few tips and tricks to get a better night-time photo. Check out these 6 tips for night-time event photography to make sure that your photos come out as best as possible.

Use artificial lighting

For night time event photography you may have no other choice than to use some sort of lighting like a flash. But using a flash effectively to capture a photo that isn’t washed out takes skill. Try to bounce the flash off a surface like a wall or ceiling rather than directly on your subject. You may also find it useful to use a softbox/diffuser to make the light a bit less harsh. The best way to use a flash well is to practice.

Don’t rely on autofocus

The first thing to understand about night-time photography is that it’s dark. It sounds silly to point this out, but you would be surprised by the number of photographers that come ill-prepared to snap pictures at a night-time event. The dark surroundings cause havoc with the autofocus and your camera will struggle to keep up with the varying light levels available.

It’s good practice to switch off your autofocus before you arrive at the event and then to make sure that you keep it off. If you step inside for a moment and you’re relishing the plethora of light sources, switch your autofocus back on but remember to go back to manual focus afterwards when you are in the darkness outside.

Try bracket exposures

Bracketing your exposures involves taking the same photo a series of times, but with different exposure settings. This allows you to experiment with the brightness of an image in advance, thereby getting a feel for the light levels of the night-time event. Try adjusting the shutter speed to see what exposure time works best in the circumstances.

Some cameras offer an automatic bracketing function, so definitely take advantage of it if you can. This technique also has the added benefit of using the various images to create HDR, or High Dynamic Range, images. Using an editing software or even in-camera in some models, you can recreate the exposure range and have a surprising depth of detail in your photo by using HDR.

Use a tripod

Night-time event photography means low light, which also means slower shutter speeds are going to be necessary for longer exposures. The longer your exposure time, the more likely you are to get blurred images not just if the subject moves, but if you move as well. Just counting on your arms to remain steady long enough for that one perfect shot is not going to work. No one will be able to hold a camera steady enough for even 1 second to avoid camera shake. So invest in a tripod so that your subject, whether it’s the slow rising moon or the wonderful city skyline come out crisp and clear when you’re forced to use a longer exposure.

Selecting the right tripod is important too. It needs to be lightweight and sturdy enough at the same time to be able to withstand the weight of your camera. You’ll want to choose a carbon fibre tripod as these are less susceptible to vibration than aluminium ones.

Use RAW format

Taking photos in the RAW format means that you’re capturing a lot more detail in your digital images that aren’t being compressed like they would if you were shooting in JPEG. A JPEG file, while smaller, doesn’t really get as much detail as you may want when shooting a night-time event, so if you have the storage space, shooting RAW is the way to go. You’ll need to do some editing afterwards, but it’s worth it to make sure that you’re preserving the image, given the limited light.

This also reduces the chances of grainy photos since RAW files retain their quality, even after post-processing.

Try out bulb mode

Admittedly, this is not a setting you would want if you anticipate live subjects. This setting on your camera means that the shutter will remain open while you’re pressing the shutter button, which means it’s unlimited exposure. The shutter won’t close until you let go.

However, for some truly intriguing images at night-time, bulb mode can give you an entirely new look and feel. For many cameras, the longest shutter speed available is 30 seconds. You’ll probably want to choose a larger f/stop when trying out bulb mode, something like f/18 if you plan on leaving the shutter open for a couple of minutes.

Bulb mode can let you create a photo like a painting, where the moving light sources become your paintbrushes. You will have to set your camera on a tripod to keep it steady and avoid camera shake.

Select high ISO

The greater the ISO, the brighter your image will be. However, this can be a tricky setting to play with, because as you increase the ISO you will also get more noise (a term that means visual distortion in digital photography). It’s a compromise you may have to make, but for low light photography where you will also need a fast shutter speed, there is no other option.

Night-time event photography is one of the most difficult genres of photography to master. But with practice and using the advice above, you will be on your way to capturing great night-time event shots.

7 Tips For Better Street Photography At Night