Taking Photos at Night Without Flash

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kumagai on March 15, 2011 at 7:33pm

1. You will need a fast lens and shoot wide open - f/1.4
2. Increase your ISO - 800+

Shooting in this manner will work, but you will get very shallow depth of field (f/1.4) and then you will get a lot of noise (ISO).

You can always use software to clean up the noise.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Paul K

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Permalink Reply by Varun Patel on March 15, 2011 at 11:25pm

well first thing first if its low light your photo is gonna be a little bit blur i mean there should be enough light to capture that still moment still there are few things you can try , first thing is increase your ISO sensitivity and second thing is use lower fstop value say near bout 4 or or lower i mean as lower you go on that you will have more light coming in and that will help you to click in low light situation also

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on March 16, 2011 at 4:28am

Blur comes from camera movement or subject movement.  A tripod can fix blur from camera movement but not blur from subject movement.  For subject blur, your options are limited to decreasing the exposure time.  There are a few ways to do that.  You can get a faster lens, which when open will give a shallow depth of field, which means foreground and background may be out of focus.  You can increase ISO, which will increase noise (looks like grain), the amount of noise varies by camera and exposure so you will have to experiment with ISO to determine what settings provide acceptable results and what setting are unacceptable.

 

You can also keep the background and use the flash.  A pop-up flash can work but the larger flash units provide more options for control.  Try this, set the flash to rear curtain.  Set the camera's mode to manual.  Adjust shutter speed and aperture for the scene.  If the subject is fairly close, set the flash power to -1.  Take the picture.  Vary flash power as required to get desired results.  The advantages to having a 430 EX II or 590 EX II flash are that you can use it on or off the camera, you can rotate the flash both up and down as well as side to side (this allows bouncing the light off of a wall or ceiling, you can add light modifiers.

 

Also, shoot raw, it will let you add more fill light or increase exposure after the picture is taken.  How well this will meet your needs, you will have to determine for yourself, but it is another option.  Software to convert raw files comes with all Canon cameras that can take a raw file, you can also use many of the commercial editing programs to convert the raw file.

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Permalink Reply by SRT30D on March 16, 2011 at 4:42pm

Several techniques required for night shots...

1. Always use a tripod so your hands do not touch the camera.

2. Use a remote shutter release- so your hands do not touch the camera.

3. Try different ISO/ASA settings until you get the desired result in combination with-

4. Slow shutter speed as you can get.

5. People walking through a scene wil always be blurred unless they're posed standing still.

6. If you need the people frozen, use your flash separate from the camera and off to the side and aimed upward, hit the 'test' button once during the exposure. This will fire the flash and give light where wanted. If it's rainy or wet in the  scene, direct the flash downward (toward the water) and it will look more 'realistic'.

7. Try setting up some strobes separate from the camera within the scene, like creating fake street lights or overhead lighting- sometimes it pays to have an assistant so you can set off multiple flash.

8. Remember that you can fiddle with the lighting in PS/post production to create the mood you totally agree with even if what you saw in the camera isn't what you wanted.

Couple things for you to try, hope it helps.

SRT

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Permalink Reply by riddell on March 17, 2011 at 3:05am

 

What are you trying to shoot?

 

You basically have 3 main options. All of which have downsides.

 

1. Open the apature (but will decrease the depth of field vastly with the kinds of settings you'll need in the dark)

2. Go with a longer shutter speed (Is going to blur everything unless you use a tripod)

3. Raise the ISO (will give you a much more noisy photo)

 

If you are shooting a static image its a no brainer. Get it on a tripod and go with a long shutter speed. In the dark that may be 30seconds - minute.

 

If your subject is not static, then its really tricky, you cannot use a long shutter speed, raising the ISO will only result in a poor quality image, so you have to go with a wide apature. This means a high end, expensive lens, something like a f1.4 and some very accurate shooting, and even then you may find the images are too dark.

 

Which leaves you with the final solution. Add some light!

 

Paul.

www.photographybyriddell.co.uk

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