NIGHT PHOTO SHOOT PHOTOGRAPHY

Apart from a camera and lens, I use a Sony Alpha A550 with a Sigma 18-250mm lens attached; a tripod is an essential piece of equipment as the camera needs to be kept as steady as possible for the long exposure shots that can be generated for night photography. A remote shutter release cable is also useful, to help cut down on possible camera shake if the shutter release button is pressed, although the in-built camera timer can also be used. Even better is a remote wireless shutter release, as the camera is not touched at all. I have a piece of sticky backed Velcro attached to the rear of my shutter release switch and also on one of the tripod legs just below the tripod head. When not being used, the shutter release switch is firmly attached by the Velcro to the tripod leg so it’s not dangling around as I am moving from one shot to another. When I need it, I know where it is and it’s easily removed. A torch is handy piece of kit to have as well, not only for checking the settings on the camera in the dark but lighting your way should you be wandering around a museum that has no permanent external lighting. Depending on the time of year, comfortable and/or warm clothing, including gloves, should be worn at all times as there is nothing worse than standing around shivering on a cold winters evening as you wait for the camera to do its thing.

If your camera or lens has built in ‘Image Stabilisation’ or ‘Steady Shot’ as in the Sony Alpha range of cameras, then it should be turned off. The in-camera or lens stabilisation is designed to reduce blurring associated with the movement of the camera during the exposure of the image, particularly when hand held. Slight compensation movements of the internal sensor/lens achieve this. When mounted on a tripod there is no camera movement but the Image Stabilisation system could still twitch while trying to detect camera movement and produce soft/out of focus images, so switching it off it locks the sensor/lens in place.

Aperture Priority, or AV on some cameras, should be used to control the shutter speed. I tend to set the AP in the f/8 to f/15 range which gives a better depth of field and produces an image that is in focus from front to rear or side to side. The higher the ‘f’ numbers then the greater the depth of field, the better the detail but the longer the shutter speed. With the excellent artificial white light available at the RAF Northolt Night Photo Shoots, an AP number of f/5.6 will give a shutter speed of around 4 to 6 seconds and produce a black night sky. At f/10 the shutter speed will be around 10 to 15 seconds and the night sky will have a nice orange glow to it from the street lighting from the suburbs of London.

Some articles in Photography magazines from experts on night shooting say you should have it turned off but I prefer to have the ‘Long Exposure Noise Reduction’ setting turned on. How this works is basically the camera takes a long exposure photo of the subject matter and then takes another long exposure, for the same length of time, with the shutter closed producing a black image. Through a piece of in-camera software wizardry it compares the two images and removes any ‘noise’ or random light coloured pixels, particularly in the black areas, that should not be there before writing the image to the card. As you can appreciate this also adds extra time it takes to transfer the image from the buffer to the storage medium. If you are doing very long exposures of 30 seconds or more or using the ‘Bulb’ or mirror lock up facility, then it would be best to turn it off and save yourself a bit of time and correct any noise in Photoshop.

If possible shoot in RAW. This will produce better results in post processing unlike Jpeg’s that are part processed in the camera. Fix the ISO at 100 as this also helps to cut down on image noise but again this increases the time the shutter remains open and the time images write to the storage card.

White Balance: I leave on AUTO and do any adjustments in Adobe Elements 8. (Other makes of photo processing software are available). Finally, make sure the on-camera flash is turned off.

If you have never attended a night photo shoot before and are a bit apprehensive about camera settings and coming away with a good set of images, there is an easy way to put some of the above information into practice. Before you attend get out into your garden after it’s dark and with a light source through a window from the kitchen/living room or even security lighting, have a practice photographing plants and objects and toys and garden furniture. Experiment with your camera settings until you are happy with the quality of the images you are getting so you will be comfortable using your camera in the dark at the photo shoot.

A final thought:

Always remember to wait until the camera has finished its long exposure before you move it.

(Revised: May11)