Photography at night - Advice and tips
Night landscape photography can be a challenging endeavor for beginners. Most photographers consider the lack of natural light to be a negative factor. However, with just a few things to know, you can quickly get into the groove. Read on for all the tips and tricks you need to master night landscape photography.
Astrophotography vs. Night Landscape Photography
When we talk about "night landscape photography," we mean capturing the stars, landscapes, and environments at night. We're not referring to astrophotography. Astrophotography has its own challenges, but I still consider it simpler than night landscape photography for a simple reason: exposure time isn't an issue.
Shooting nighttime scenery is challenging due to the blurring of the environment. Tracking stars blurs landscapes, and tracking nighttime landscapes blurs stars. If you want to capture stars as fixed points, you're forced to use short exposure times. Longer exposure times will capture their movement. Your shot may also be negatively impacted by light pollution, as exposure length increases the degradation of the photo due to this pollution.
How to Avoid Light Pollution
Finding a truly dark sky is becoming increasingly difficult. This is due to increased light pollution coming from almost everywhere in the world. Light pollution is also known as light pollution. The best thing you can do is travel as far away from large cities as possible. Look for dark landscapes. To get an idea of light pollution worldwide, visit the Light Pollution Map website.
The amount of stars you see depends on the season and your geographic location. The closer you are to the equator, the better. Moving north, the galaxy's core gets lower until it reaches a point just above the horizon. That's where the orange hue created by light pollution peaks.
During winter, nights are longer. The galaxy's core appears below the horizon and is visible only from the southern hemisphere. There are many websites and mobile apps that calculate the position of the galaxy's core. They'll let you know in advance if, when, and how much of the core you'll see from a given location. Focus your attention on the overall scenery, not just the starry sky.
What's Needed for Night Scene Photography?
If you adhere to some fundamental principles of nighttime photography, you won't need huge budgets for top-notch equipment. Of course, some basics are always necessary. Let's look at what you can't do without.
Photographic Equipment for Night Landscape Photography:
- Digital camera with a wide-angle lens
- Quality lens
- Camera tripod
- Filter
Camera
A digital full-frame camera capturing shots in RAW format, with the ability to manually adjust exposure and ISO, allows you to control how the night sky is displayed. The camera's large sensor helps capture more light, which is important for night photography. Other factors affecting night photography include noise reduction, a remote control or timer, and the so-called Bulb mode.
Lens
A wide-angle lens with an aperture ranging from f/1.4 to f/3.5 is considered a "fast" lens. This is the ideal working range for night landscape photography. These lenses have an excellent feature that allows more light to pass through to the sensor.
The lens should allow for manual focusing mode and should have good optical performance, such as sharpness, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and astigmatism at fully open aperture value. As for the focal length for full-frame cameras, we recommend choosing a maximum of 50mm. The option to use a filter is another plus.
Tripod
For perfect nighttime photography, a quality tripod is more than essential. Long exposures require a stable camera without movement. Invest in a quality tripod that will keep your camera steady and motionless during exposure. Choose a tripod with a wide range of adjustments, especially in height settings, tilt adjustment, flexible legs, and a hook for anchoring in inclement weather.
Filters
Filters are by no means a substitute for a dark sky, but they can help combat unwanted orange light caused by light pollution. In short, a filter reduces or eliminates lights of certain wavelengths and prevents that light from hitting the sensor. This result cannot be achieved through editing. Therefore, it's good to invest in various filters.
What Settings to Choose at Night?
Aperture
Set the lowest aperture value on your lens. This allows more light to enter the lens and increases the camera's sensitivity to low light. Test values around f/2.8; if necessary, choose lower numbers.
Shutter Speed
Nighttime photos require a long exposure time to capture enough starlight. Start with a shutter speed of around 10-25 seconds and adjust as needed. A long shutter speed can result in capturing star movement, which can be aesthetically pleasing.
ISO
Set the ISO sensitivity to a value between 800 and 3200, depending on your specific lighting conditions. A higher ISO value allows for more sensitive light capture, but it can also increase the amount of noise in the photograph.
RAW Format
If your camera supports RAW format, shooting in this format will allow you greater control over edits in post-processing.
Manual Focus
For nighttime photography, it's often better to use the aforementioned manual focus mode to have precise control over focusing. Set the focus to infinity or use live view for precise focusing on distant stars.
Night landscape photography isn't one of the easiest disciplines, but with patience, practice, and the right technique, you can achieve impressive results. And don't forget to share your shots with us on our Facebook page.