Settings for night shots

I'd like to get opinions about the ISO, shutter speed and aperture settings that work well for night shooting. I did an experiment recently where I shot a night skyline at pretty much every combination of f/stop and shutter speed, and then put all the photos into a grid. I wanted to see if the "lower the f/stop by one, half the exposure time" rule of thumb held true at night. Perhaps not surprisingly, it didn't - at least not with my shots. So, what settings do you find yourself using most often?

Tags: ISO, aperture, exposure, f-stop, f/stop, light, low, night, shutter, skyline, More…speed

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Permalink Reply by Duff on May 20, 2008 at 5:01am

The one thing that I always do is keep the iso setting at 100 for the sake of clarity. Most of the time I keep the aperture in the range of F11-F8, with some variation and always use my bulb settings rather than set exposures...

Permalink Reply by Alex R on July 22, 2010 at 8:26am

I would LOVE to hear more on this topic. mabye edit and repost to gain interest!!

Permalink Reply by Chris Simpson on July 27, 2010 at 7:00am

im also keen to find out more, i recently took a photo overlooking the city of Adelaide, Australia at night and the lights kept coming out a bit blurred, i'll post the picture im talking about in a few hours, im wondering if someone can give some advice perhaps.

Permalink Reply by DJK on July 31, 2010 at 1:45am

I'm a complete novice, but my advice is ISO is always at the lowest possible (100 for me). I've had great success in the F11-F8 range. If you're looking for lights to have the starry effect, F22 is the range needed (based on experience and research). Being new to photography, I usually shoot in AV mode with the aperture set to my preference (usually in the F22-16 range, per my own preference), and then I let the camera suggest the rest. I used the Bulb feature for the first time shooting fireworks, which worked great, but I envision it might not translate as well to general night shots (or, at least, I'm not advanced enough to adopt this techinque). My disclaimer...I'm not up to speed on the rules.

Permalink Reply by Aaron Bauer on September 9, 2010 at 4:46pm

I use a couple combos depending on how long i want to keep my shutter open. iso 400 at f/14 is one i use a lot for light painting. I really like flares so i try to keep at f/11 or smaller. I feel the iso 400 brings out more color than iso 100. I do use iso 100 if i'm shooting car trails but i'm open a little more on my aperture to f/7.1-f/9. I feel the smaller the aperture the sharper the pick. try iso 400 at f/22 or smaller.

examples for detail purposes: These pictures are striaght out of the camera so you can see the trueness of the exposure iso and f/stop combos.
iso100, f/8, 137 sec exposure. I don't see the detail going on in this picture as much as i had liked to due to the iso and f/stop.

iso400, f/18, 122 sec exposure. There is a lot more detail and texture in this picture than the one above due to the smaller aperture and more vibrant colors due to the iso.