One of the areas of photography that people get wrong is night photography, most people assume that you just use the flash and everything is fine, or that there is one group of settings for night photography. OK, this is fine for the odd snap shot of your friends or on a night out. But, if you want to get creative and make stunning images at night you’re going to have to do a lot more than just turn the flash on, when you have finished reading this you’ll be able to create images like this:
In this article I am going to show you how to use a technique called Long Exposure. Say good bye to harsh lighting and dark backgrounds. Sort of. This article will show you how to take pictures of night scenes with no moving objects. Night photos of people I will show you later on in another article as that is another kettle of fish.
Firstly, let’s pick a subject. For this article our subject will be a lake. That is easy, it doesn’t get too much more difficult. I promise. Now you have your subject, you’ll need to get your equipment setup. For this article, I’ll use my equipment to show you what is needed.
Equipment Required
The following list links to the equipment that I recommend and use. You can buy the items from these links.
Now let’s get down to business. First, set your tripod up at the desired height, to save you any trouble later on make sure your tripod is level. You will thank me. Now, mount the camera on the tripod making sure it’s secure.
Setting Up Your Shot
Switch your camera to manual. OK, you’ve got this far it’s going good, time to set up the shot. Don’t bother composing your shot just yet as we have to sort some other things out first. Set your camera to auto-focus or AF. This may not work depending on the conditions but most of the time it will work just fine. Zoom in all the way and find a light source or light area that is the same distance away as the subject you want in focus, press the shutter half way down. Once the camera has focused on the light source or light area zoom all the way out (or however far out you want when you compose the shot, you can zoom in or out as far as you like it will always stay in focus) and make sure, without touching the shutter or the focus ring switch back to manual focus. Be sure you’re not touching the focus ring when you compose.
Now you have the camera focused you can proceed to compose the shot. This is something that no tutorial can tell you how to do, this is in the eye of the photographer. Be creative and show off your creative eye.
Tip: Wide angles create a bigger impact than longer focal lengths.
Setting The Correct Exposure
You’re almost there, the next major part is getting the exposure right, this is easy if you know how. The best way to expose your shot manually is to use your camera’s built in light meter as a rough guide, but not as a precise judge. When you first start you will need to follow it tightly but as you gain more and more experience you won’t need the meter at all.
Change the camera to AV mode(Aperture priority) Now, set the ISO to 1600. As a rough guide I recommend you stop down the aperture to f/8 to achieve maximum sharpness when using the Canon 18-55mm kit lens but you may need to keep it at f/3.5 depending on the conditions. Now, press the shutter half way and you will see the light meter, it’s a line with a small arrow, this will move around as you change the aperture. Adjust aperture accordingly so it makes the line stay in the middle. Once it is in the middle, press the shutter down half way. The camera will give you the shutter speed that you require, make sure you remember this number as you will need it to work out how long your final exposure will be.
For this next part you may need a calculator, depending on how good your mental arithmetic is. In my case I usually need to use the calculator on my phone, maths is not a strong point for me. Now we need to calculate how long we need to keep the shutter open for. As an example we will say the camera gave you a shutter speed of 10 seconds when we used the light meter, keep this number in your head. Now set the ISO to 100. Take your number (In this example 10 seconds) and multiply that number by 16. This gives us 160 seconds, Divide this by 60, this gives us about 3 minutes.
Now plug in your remote shutter release, set the camera to BULB mode (move the shutter down past 30 seconds). Get a timing device (Phone, stop watch or similar) and get it prepared to begin. Press the remote shutter release and lock it on. Start the timer.
If you want to be certain of good exposure then you can round it up to the nearest minute (In our case 3 minutes). Once you have reached the target time, unlock the remote shutter release and wait for the camera to proceed with noise reduction.
The end result will be a nicely exposed picture. The things I haven’t covered in this article are white balance and shooting in RAW format. I will be writing articles for this later on.
Comments
10 seconds X 16 = 1600 seconds??
Great article, the only thing though is that when setting a focus-point before composition, you say to zoom in all the way to find the focus point, fix it using AF then switch to MF – then zoom out. On a lot of lower-end lenses, and in fact most SLR lenses to some degree will not create a perfectly sharp photo since the focal length will be different and as such the focus will be slightly off.
I find its best to zoom to the desired zoom length (for me usually all the way out at 17mm), don’t worry about composition and find a focal point (a streetlight, or high-contrasting point somewhere), use AF to focus, then switch to MF and finally re-compose, while making sure not to nudge the focus ring or the zoom ring
Excellent articles though, keep ‘em coming!
Hi JP, thanks for pointing that one out! I’ve corrected the error now. Thanks.
Cheers Daze, a good point. Especially true on the kit lens! The reason I said to do it on the point of focus is less experienced people will need to use the light meter to judge the time required for the exposure.
Cheers.
Many thanks for the article.
)
I ‘stumbled’ upon your site while looking for a circuit to make a remote trigger (I like to do these sort of thing myself, being a keen amateur electronics enthusiast, and a tightwad as well
I am a complete novice (point and shoot only using a Canon Power Shot A85), having just treated myself to a Canon 400d with kit lens, 2gig flash card and a cheap tripod. Having had a while to experiment I think the cheap tripod was a bad idea so I will have to save for a more sturdy one. I also fancy some close up work so Tamron macro, here I come.
Your instructions are great, easy to follow.
I shall be trying them out as soon as the rain eases off, and will coming back to your site to tell you how I got on.
Richard
Richard, thanks for reading the article.
I look forward to seeing how you get on!
A problem I’ve repeatedly run in to with long exposures is lens flare. There may not be much one can do about it, but be aware that if you’ve got a light shining across your lens in a several minute exposure, you’ll probably get lens flare. It’s worth keeping in mind when composing your shot. If the light source is out of frame, you can help a lot by simply standing in the way of the light, casting your shadow across the lens.
Have you tried using a lens hood? they usually eliminate all flare from light straying across the lens.
I enjoyed reading your article especially on how to get the right exposure and timings. Wish I read them yesterday as I was out last night in electrical storms and got some nice images of forked lightening over the local pier. The method I used is try it and see, which although has merit (as I can check each image at the time and make adjustments) it is a obviously hit and miss. The points in your article above will be tried next time I go out and at that time I shall let you know how I get on. With regard to lens hoods. I took a black umberella as it also kept the rain off my camera etc lol
I think you’ll find a bigger hit rate if you use the exposure trick. You do need to be flexible with it as the light meters built into cameras sometimes under or overexpose.
Do let me know how you get on!
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I rarely use my 18-55mm that came with my 400D and I’ve been looking at doing some night shots so this is great! Easy to understand and follow. Thanks!
[...] HOW TO: Create A Long Exposure Night Photo @ Adcuz A tutorial on getting the correct exposure with long exposure night photos. A must for people who want to take stunning night photos! [...]
thanks for the wonderful article. it was a pleasure to experiment with your tips and tricks.
I’m glad you found it useful
Hey dude.. This is cool..i’m going to try it mostly because I’d like to do more night photography.
You should Alex! Never seen a Nikon user do it though!
Hi,
Thanks for the great article – as a complete amateur I was looking for someone to put this technique into ‘plain english’ so I could follow the procedure step by step.
Just a question (forgive me, I am so new at this, it’s my first slr) when you mention to check the light metre in AV mode – for some reason the reading, and the adjustments will only show up in Manual on my camera (Rebel XTi) – am I missing something? Or is this just the way this particular camera works? I just want to be sure I am doing this right. It seems to be working so far, but I would appreciate your advice!
Thanks again for the article!
Hi,
There does appear to be a small error in that part, I will have a look through this article at some point and get it sorted.
Just make sure the exposure time isn’t flashing.
Hi,
Ok – no probs! Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t totally messing everything up!
Looks to be ok – I am getting the hang of things, nothing flashing yet!
Thanks again
nice article.. I’ll have to experiment more with night photography..
Thanks for this tutorial. This was just what I was looking oor. I experiment it with my Canon 20d and 17-85 lens and founded that the even going back to 100 iso I had o set the exposure to only one sixt of the calculated time. ea. Meater at 1600 iso was showing 4, mutiplied that by 16 will give me 64 sec. Photo was to exposed. Set it down to 30sec, still to exposed, finaly at 10 sec it looked like a nice shot and prity much good exposure. What did I do wrong so that your calculation didnt work with my shot?
Giovanny, sorry to hear it didn’t work out for you. This article is definitely in need of a re-write as I have just read over it and noticed some errors in it.
I wrote it over a year ago now and have learned a lot in that time.
I feel that your problem may however be related to aperture, if I remember correctly I based this article on the lens being set at f/3.5. What aperture size did you have your lens set to?
This Night Photography is quite a lot more complex than people think.. in the day you can just point and shoot. At night you have to really think about what you are doing or you could be wasting 8 minutes or more at times!
I hope to hear back from you and maybe we can get this sorted out.
I like the idea of attempting to create an all in one method for proper metering for low light photography but I have to think that it’s almost impossible. Unless you are using a high end hand held light meter able to calculate up to 10 min. exposures, any EV will be questionable. Also, once you get over one second of exposure, reciprocity failure needs to be taken into account (I know RF is more of a B&W film issue but still applicable to digital color). I have been shooting low light scenes and star trails for almost 15 years and I found that the only way to get good is to shoot…a lot (just like all photography). Of course you have to have lots of patience…the time it takes to get one shot of an electrical storm , you could take 20+ shots of a waterfall in the afternoon light. Keep records of your shooting and review what works for full moons, urban lighting, light painting, etc. Then, after a few sessions you will get a feel for what works for you to get the effect you like.
Hi Del,
This tutorial is old and was written when I was starting out. These days I tend to do exactly as you said above.. After doing night photography for a while I have developed a feel for it and don’t need to do the maths.. I know what works in different situations which is great.
Unfortunately you can’t teach someone to get a natural feel, they have to learn by doing it rather than being taught.
Cheers for your comment
Found your site while looking for information on night photography just what I was looking for.
I am using a Canon 400 D with a 18-55 lense and still experimenting with various settings
What I find is that when using the (BULB)setting the battery looses it’s power very quickly
Bill
hello,
Just got into night photography, been taking photographs of the moon/stars. And know I am trying houses and streets.I’ve begun this with a Canon s5is and am about to go and buy meself a Nikon D80, have you any experience with this camera? And do you have any recommendations for a remote shutter release? Thanks! Also, love the article, really took the complexities and difficulties of night photography and funneled them to become easier.
Henry,
I’m pretty sure the S5IS is a bridge camera? I doubt that that camera would support a shutter release as that’s a feature you tend to find on a DSLR.
I’d say stay away fromt the D80 if you’d like to do more night photography. One of my friends has one and it suffers from a defect that makes the top corners of an image purple if you expose for more than 3 minutes. Not a lot of use.
[...] Long Exposure Night Photography – Step By Step Guide [...]
[...] Long Exposure Night Photography This article shows you how to take pictures of night scenes with no moving objects. [...]
[...] Long Exposure Night Photography [...]
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this helped me so much!!! it was making me so mad when i couldnt get the shutter speed slowed
really enjoying this but shooting on a Nikon i only get a reading of LO not to helpful
waiting your hints and tips on RAW as this is always what i shot in
you have excellent easy to understand tutorials which i have found very helpful in helping me reach my more creative side
Is this the same calculation if you are using ISO200??
No, shooting ISO 200 would make the exposure calculation half of what it would be for 100.
so you would multiply by 8 not 16??
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so, does this work for a Nikon D60? Also, I have a 18-55mm lense and a 55-200mm. Which would be better for nigh shots of landscapes?
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[...] Long Exposure Night Photography – Step By Step Guide [...]
Long exposure photography is requiring strong techniques and a lot of practice. It’s not easy for a beginner, but your tips are definitely useful!
hi adcruz… im just a noob in photography. just saw your article and its nice to have seen it. I do have one question though, why do i have to change to MFocus after using Autofocus and while pressing the shutter button halfway? tnx man…. nice article.
very useful and informative article.
Nice article but I also have a Nikon and just get “Lo” instead of a shutter speed. ISO is 1600 and the aperture is wide open. Any tips about what to do when it doesn’t give you a shutter speed?
Thank goodness for those that teach. Your article was of much value to me. Thanks for the lesson!
[...] Long Exposure Night Photography This article shows you how to take pictures of night scenes with no moving objects. [...]
[...] 4. Digital Photography Tips – Step by Step Guide to Long Exposure Night Photography [...]
Hi!love this article,great details.but I was wondering if you could do something similar with a point-and-shoot type of digital camera.
[...] Long Exposure Night Photography – Step By Step Guide [...]
Thank you for this grat tutorial,but i have one question.
If I dont have light meter on may cammera when I press the shutter half way,how can I know what is the right shutter speed?
Thank you!
[...] Long Exposure Night Photography This article shows you how to take pictures of night scenes with no moving objects. [...]
Hello, I’ve only reAcently learnt about light painting and i’ve only just recently gotten myself a digital camera a Canon E0S 550D which i’m still getting used to. As a complete beginner to this subject and night photography on the whole i was wondering if there were night/light photographer groups in London where you can tag along and learn hands on. Also there was a link to a forum on here the last time i came, but i can’t find it, is it still running? How can i find it and are there any others where i can learn from.
HI,
Thanks for your great article. I am going to try out those tips/tricks and see what happens. Can I ask, do you find any particular lens better for night time photography?
Opps forgot to add email address on this post below.
HI,
Thanks for your great article. I am going to try out those tips/tricks and see what happens. Can I ask, do you find any particular lens better for night time photography?
[...] Long Exposure Night Photography This article shows you how to take pictures of night scenes with no moving objects. [...]
How can i make a perfect dome for my photography class?
Hello Adcuz,
I have been taking night pictures for a few days. I am preparing myself for a road trip where I will take lots of night pictures. I’m using Manual mode for all of my pictures. Even though I use a tripod for night pictures, the pictures are not as crispy clear as I wanted; compare to yours. I will try using your method tonight or this weekend and see if there’s any difference.
I’m using a 5D Mark ii with the kit lens.
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