9 Tips of Night shoot photography by rick gondrong

1. Taking photos after sunset (Twilight zone)
Twilight is the time before sunrise, or after sunset, when sunlight scattered in the upper atmosphere illuminates the lower atmosphere, and the surface of the Earth is between light and dark. Dawn is the time before sunrise. It is recognized by the presence of weak sunlight, while the sun itself is still below the horizon. Dusk is the time after the sunset, the amount of light still available during twilight zone allows a faster shutter speed to create short motion blurs.
The best time of taking photos after sunset is during the dusk. The sky isn’t completely black but the blue color of sky is great and still show more details in the distance with the faster shutter speed.

When the sun is going downOriginally uploaded by Rick Gondrong.

2. Keep it Steady will reduce blurry and camera shaking
With minimum light at night, it will requires slow shutter speed. To shoot bright pictures without the blur at night, use a tripod or monopod to keep your camera steady.
When using a tripod or monopod you can use three technic:
a. Cable release, A cable release allows you to fire the shutter without having to touch the camera body (and tripod).
b. Mirror lockup, enable your cameras mirror lockup setting and gently press the shutter. Check your user manual for details of where this option is and how it works. (On my Canon, it’s under the “Custom Functions” menu).
c. Self timer, this will let you press the shutter release button and let the camera settle before taking the picture. Most cameras default to 10 second timer.
If you don’t have a tripod or monopod with you, find some support objects to keep your body and arms stable. For example, you can lean on a wall or place your elbows on a table to keep your arms steady. If there’s nothing to help keep you steady, stand with your legs far apart from each other and hold your breath while taking the picture.

3. Use Higher ISO but it will make noisey photo
Some time noisey photos more better than blurry photos, because you can reduce noise with image editing software but you can’t remove blur. Use a higher ISO will give more brightness photos.

4. Use larger lens aperture or F-number smaller
The aperture range of a lens refers to the amount that the lens can open up or close down to let in more or less light, respectively. Apertures are listed in terms of f-numbers, which quantitatively describe relative light-gathering area. Lenses with larger apertures are also described as being “faster,” because for a given ISO speed, the shutter speed can be made faster for the same exposure.
Additionally, a smaller aperture means that objects can be in focus over a wider range of distance, a concept also termed the depth of field.
For example, lens aperture f/1.0 is better in the night shoot than lens aperture f/2.8

5. Make a Motion Blur photos

Jakarta at Night
Originally uploaded by a Journey Beyond.

Some time blurry photos are not bad like a motion blur, it can add some interest of your photos. When shooting a moving objects, or deliberatly move your camera (panning technic) to create a motion blur. Zooming in while the shutter is still open will also add an interesting forward-motion effect (zooming blur).

6. Use Bulb Mode
Ever see “bulb” flash on your camera as you crank the dial to increase exposure time? Bulb mode is when your shutter stays open for as long as you hold down the shutter release. Most cameras will top out at a 30 second exposure. Bulb mode combined with a locking cable release allows you to keep the shutter open for as long as you want.

7. Use Flash or additional light
By using flash or additional light like continuous light is the usual technic to shoot in the dark. The combination of flash and long exposure will give you good photos at night. The flash will freeze the foreground and the long exposure will reveal the background.
When shooting the people, they always tend to move right after they see the flash, you need to set the shutter curtain sync to the second curtain (Usually in the custom functions settings). This will fire a flash just before the shutter closes instead of in the beginning. Using second curtain sync will also put people in front of any motion blur so nothing is covering their faces. Second curtain sync is available in most new digital SLR cameras but rarely seen in point and shoot cameras.

8. Create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos with auto exposure bracketing

London Night View from NFT HDR
Originally uploaded by vladatzar.

When using auto exposure bracketing (AEB) technic on camera, place your camera on a tripod for steady state and shoot three exposures, one darker, one lighter, and one just in the middle.
Then load the images into HDR image editor like Photoshop or Photomatix and create HDR file out of the three exposures. After create a HDR image, you can apply tone mapping to to reveal more details. With a tone mapped night photos, it can give results similar to shooting during twilight with more post-processing control.

9. Use continuous shoot and Stack
Sometimes when you shoot long exposures, noise and hot pixels will appear even at the lowest ISO setting.
To overcome this problem, shoot the same photo a few times (more is better) with continuous shoot, and use Photoshop CS3 image stacking to combine the analyze the image to remove noise and hotpixels.
After open Photoshop CS3, follow this instruction :
1. Open the File> Scripts menu and choose Load files into Stack
2. Click the Browse button and load all the images.
3. Checkmark the “Create Smart Oject after Loading Layers” and click OK.
4. Open the Layers> Smart Objects> Stack Mode menu and choose Median.

tips n trick by rick gondrong