14 Best Night Photography Tips for Beginners
Night photography is an intricate yet beautiful area of photography. The beauty of night photography is that it can produce images like no other time of day. Street lights, light trails, soft water, and reflective surfaces can all dramatize a night photograph.
Night photo of the Porto waterfront in Portugal
There is a lot to think about with night photography and it requires photographers to be more methodical in the way that they shoot. Taking control of the way you approach your night photography is the fastest way to improve. These 14 best night photography tips for beginners will help you improve your night photography.
Use Manual Focus
Manual focus might be obvious for some, but when I first started my photography journey I ruined a fair share of my night photos by not using manual focus. Autofocus often uses contrast detection and tries to focus on something between the light and dark in the frame. This means that autofocus often struggles with the night sky.
Night photo of the Sun and Moon Pagodas in Guilin, China
While you might think you have a clear shot, when you get home and upload your photos onto your computer you will likely find a few out of focus photos in the mix. Manual focus minimizes the room for error and you should use it especially when the place is particularly dark.
Get Comfortable With Bulb Mode
Bulb mode is one of the camera settings reserved for long exposures and night photography. You might not always need to use bulb mode but it can be useful when it's very dark outside and you are in need of a longer shutter speed of more than 30 seconds.
An example of when you would need bulb mode would be a scene of lake at night so dark that your camera needs to go past the 30 seconds timer and your photo needs more light. Most nighttime cityscape scenes would usually need between 5-30 seconds of exposure, so bulb mode would be reserved for darker night photos where there is a lack of artificial light.
Night view of the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Salzburg
Another useful way to use bulb mode is when you want to create a light painting effect. Light painting is when the scene is usually very dark and the photographer uses a torch, or some other light source to make different shapes within the dark scene. The desired outcome might be somebody's name lighting up the scene with sparklers. This isn't for everybody but if you are interested in this then check out this light painting post here.
Ditch Night Mode and Choose Manual Settings
Night photography is a careful well-calculated craft, but night mode destroys the precision of this type of photography. Shooting at night needs to be well thought out and you should choose the settings you want manually. Leaving it up to the camera is like letting someone else choose the photos you shoot. If you do decide to use night mode the photos will vary drastically from the ones you had in mind.
Night view of people eating outside a traditional German restaurant in Munich
Using manual mode will allow you to control the iso, shutter speed, and aperture. This exposure triangle is of utmost importance at night. For example, if you wanted to take a photo of a street scene at night then you might like to have people in the scene or you might want a motion blur effect to blur them out. You may want a clean image at a low iso, or a grainy image with a high iso. Night mode chooses a balanced setting to allow enough light into the camera giving you little choice in how your photo turns out and leaving you with mediocre images at best.
The creative choice needs to be yours here. The camera doesn't know your desired outcome especially when shooting at night. Auto modes tend to do better during day scenes which easier more balanced lighting conditions. So remember to always use manual mode at night and create the effects you want.
Bring a flashlight
You may not always have bright city lights to light up your night shots. So bringing a small flashlight can sometimes save your night photography. A flashlight can help you light up an area of a scene so your camera can have a clear focus. You may even want to use it to paint with light or shine a light on a particularly dark part of the frame.
Night view of Jinli Ancient Street in Chengdu
A small flashlight could even be useful if you are walking somewhere rural at night and you need to light up the path. This has happened to me before on a mountain hike, when I was descending from the mountain the small flashlight saved me and illuminated the dark path.
Shoot on Film for Cool, Creative Effects
Shooting at night is not for everyone but then again neither is shooting on film. Shooting on film can create even more surprising creative effects as the colors that night photography produces are already odd.
When we add film into the mix the whole process becomes even more magical. Although shooting on film is not a must, it can produce some interesting and surprisingly cool night shots if you're interested.
Create Fun Light Trails
Light trails are streaks of lights that are created by an external light source that passes through the frame of long-exposure photographs. To create a cool light trail you will need your camera on a tripod with a slow shutter speed of a few seconds or more. The moving lights from cars will create these trails but it can also be done with boats on rivers and other moving lights.
Light trails in the city center of Chengdu
Light trails are awesome, as they allow us photographers to create cool effects of cars or other bright moving objects in the frame. Light trails are particularly interesting in cityscape photos as there are usually a lot of cars or bright moving objects like bikes or even boats on a river.
Use Water to Make Your Night photography Stand Out
Bodies of water such as rivers, lakes and the sea can all add so much to your images. Long exposures smooth out the water creating a magical effect against the city lights.
Praca Do Comercio city square architecture reflected on a puddle of water in Lisbon
You can use water to reflect certain buildings, or you could use it to transform a boring shot into something amazing. Even a rain puddle can reflect architecture as you can see in the photo above. Always be on the lookout for water when taking photos at night as it can transform your imagery.
Shutter Remote or Shutter Release Cable
Get yourself a shutter remote to press the shutter button without touching your camera. These can be picked up for very cheap online, and basically allow you to eliminate the chances of camera shake by not pressing the camera button yourself.
City skyline view of Chongqing at night
If you want to take it a bit further you could buy a shutter release cable and this will allow you to dial in settings to the camera through a cable. This would be more useful in a scenario of taking very long exposures for example in bulb mode.
If you forget your shutter remote use the self-timer function. The self timer function on the camera settings can usually be set to 2, 5, and 10 seconds. Once you have set the amount of seconds you can press the shutter button and your camera's self-timer will countdown allowing it to take a photo without a remote or cable. This tip has saved me a number of times as I often forget my remotes.
Capture Movement in Your Night Photography
One of the most useful night photography tips is to capture some movement in your night shots. Slow shutter speeds are key for this as you usually want the movement to be exaggerated and have a slightly blurred effect.
Crowds of people moving through Ximending shopping district taken on a long exposure
Cars create light trails and crowds become blurred creating a surreal effect on city streets. Star trails can also be photographed on a lake in the night sky. The key here is movement and there are many ways to incorporate this into your night photography. Movement can really add a sense of place to your otherwise empty-looking shots.
Always bring a Tripod
With the exception of some street photography, most night photography will require you to bring a tripod. A sturdy tripod will eliminate camera shake and enable you to capture clean sharp images without any blur. If you think you need a tank of a tripod, that isn't necessary, a good travel tripod will do just as well.
Shooting Raw Will Save the Night
Shooting in the raw file format will save some of your photos from poor exposure. It will give you the ability to save your under-exposed or over-exposed photos in post processing. Not all night photos will turn out as you planned, but raw files will allow you to rescue images that are slightly ruined.
Night view of the Sea Containers building along the River Thames, London
With the right post-processing, raw files can be transformed into stunning photos. However if the shadows are crushed or the highlights are fully blown out there is usually no saving the photo. Getting your camera setting right is always the best precaution but if you forget then at least the raw file format gives us some leeway for slightly under exposed or over exposed photographs.
Lighting
Lighting in night photography is perhaps the most important aspect. When photographing at night we need to pay extra attention to check our lighting. You might see the photo you want to capture but because of poor lighting conditions, you will be unable to capture it correctly.
Close up of the Chongqing city skyline at night
To achieve the desired outcome for your night photography make sure you check the scene for bright lights, flashes, car lights, street lights, or particularly dark areas. Any type of extreme light can completely ruin an otherwise great shot.
Lighting for night photography is the most difficult part to get right but as long as you are making intentional decisions about where you want the light in your scene then you are making progress.
Get Familiar With Your Camera Settings
Knowing the exposure triangle will help you improve your night photography very fast. The exposure triangle refers to the aperture iso and shutter speed. These three settings work together and directly affect each other. In combination, they are known as the exposure triangle you can learn more on this here.
You need to figure out what kind of depth of field you want in your photos. For my night photos I mostly use a tripod with a long shutter speed, a deep depth of field, and a low iso. This produces crisp images clean from image noise.
Different types of night photography will need specific camera settings. Settings for photographing a person at night would be a wide aperture, a fast shutter speed to freeze movement, and a medium to high iso. This is the opposite of what I use for most of my night time photography as I usually shoot city photography.
Night view of Buda Castle along the River Danube in Budapest. Camera Settings: ISO 50, F8, 6S Seconds
For my night photography seen in this post, I have used a tripod with a long shutter speed, a deep depth of field, and a low iso. The photo settings above are ISO 50, an aperture of F8, and a long shutter speed of 6 Seconds. This exposure suits this photo well but other photos will differ depending on the lighting. Remember photography is a creative choice and we all take photos of different subject matters which makes it even more important to know your camera settings.
Preview Your Images
It's easy to get overexcited when shooting at night, but try to remember the importance of slowing the photography process down. Preview your images on the back of the camera properly. Zoom into parts of the photo on the back of the screen. Even though digital camera screens are small they still provide adequate results to preview.
Check the preview to make sure that your photos are in focus as you take them. Make sure there aren't any light flares from street lights ruining your shots. Remember to take test shots in order to get your exposure settings just right. All these little things add up and as you start your night photography journey they might be difficult to remember but after a while, they will become second nature.
Boat restaurant night view docked along the Hamburg Harbor
Night photography is by far my favourite genre of photography. The precision of getting a great night photograph can be slightly harder than daytime photography but achieving the right result in night photography can be well worth the extra effort. It can transform dull subjects or scenes into great photos making them unrecognizable.