Have you ever tried to take a photo at night? When the skies are pitch-black, when light is absent in your surroundings, when the only sparks of light are those of the stars out there in space. That overwhelming feeling you get when you look up to night sky, and realize how small we actually are in the immense ever-expanding universe.. yes, only then you will know what I mean. It’s a unique experience in its entirety.
Let’s take you to one of the most exotic locations on earth. Let’s take you to the wonderful island of Bali. On the 25th of March 2020, a social event took place on the island of Bali, Indonesia. This event is called Nyepi. During Nyepi, the entire island seems to come to a complete standstill. From sunrise on the 25th to sunrise on the 26th of March, public roads have become inaccessible to everyone. All shops were closed, no lights were allowed to be switched on, and no one was allowed to make noise. It was like a mix between Earth Hour, the silence during the remembrance at a war memorial, and an evening curfew.. but then for an entire day.
During the day, it did not seem like anything changed. It was bright outside, the wind was blowing, except.. it was quiet. Though you could hear the sounds of nature, you did not hear any man-made sounds. No cars, no motorcycles, no loud construction noise. It almost seemed like we were somewhere remote, in the middle of the nature. “Serenity is right here, right now…”
For us, it started to get interesting when the sun was going down. From here on, it was only getting darker and darker. It came to a moment when it became so dark, you could simply not see what was in front of you. Remember, the only light that you had, was the light from the night sky. We were walking around for a while, finally ending up in an area with a wide-open view of the sky.
The gear that we brought for this night was the following:
- Nikon D5100
- Tokina ATX-i 11-16mm f/2.8 CF
- Tripod
- Wired Shutter-release
As you can tell, it is nothing fancy, nothing excessive.. very minimal, but highly effective.
After setting up the tripod, attaching the camera, and attaching the wired shutter-release, which truly is already a challenge on its own.. we had to achieve focus. We managed to get this by taking bright test shots, and use the zoom-button to get closer to our subject, which was the night sky. Of course, it did require multiple test shots, each time fine-tuning our focus.
The moment you have your focus right, it is time to determine the correct shutter speed. Once you are satisfied with your exposure, you want to lower your ISO number to as low as possible. By doing this, you will have to compensate by slowing down your shutter speed even further. From here on, it was not as much of a challenge as it was focusing.
Based on our gear, we were able to get below desired exposures for both our test and actual shots. Mind you, it took us five test shots until we were happy with our exposure.
Test exposure | Actual exposure | |
Aperture | f/5.6 | f/5.6 |
Shutter speed | 2″ | 530″ |
ISO | 25,600 (extended mode) | 100 |
Did you notice how our shutter speed dropped from 530 to 2 seconds when we dropped our ISO number from 25,600 to 100? As most digital cameras have their slowest shutter speed to be 30 seconds, and should you want to go beyond this shutter speed, you will have to use the ‘Bulb-mode’. This is where a remote shutter-release comes into play.
What is important for you to remember is that you will need to keep track of how long you have that shutter open. When calculating your shutter speed, especially when using the bulb-mode, you need to ensure that you have some sort of time tracking tool, whether this would be your watch or your phone. And quite frankly, the latter is the better option.
We spent a good hour, almost one and a half hour, in the field just for a couple of photos. “Just a few photos?” Yes.. just a few photos. But the best thing about these.. is that they’re all amazing!
Recommendations
When you are taking photos at night, there are a variety of aspects that you may want to take into consideration. We will provide you with some useful recommendations on these aspects. This way, you will be able to step up your game in this area of your craft.
Keep it.. steady…
First of is stability. It doesn’t matter at which focal length you shoot, shooting in the dark requires you to use (extremely) slow shutter speeds. Therefore, stability is imperative.
It is very unlikely that you will be able to handhold shots in low light situations. Therefore, it is very important to bring a tripod. This will prevent your good self from getting camera shake in your photos, and it makes the whole process a whole lot more comfortable and fun.
Go wide.. or perhaps…
The second aspect we will discuss is focal length. Depending on what you are photographing, and how you want to visualize your creative view, you choose your focal length accordingly. When people think of night photography, people tend to think about a sky full of stars, or a cityscape with all the high-rise buildings lit. For these kind of photos, a wider-angle lens is preferred. But don’t limit yourself to wide-angle lenses only in your creative endeavors.
Should you be photographing the night sky to capture all the stars up there, a wide-angle is perfect. However, you may want to avoid extreme wide-angle lenses, such as fish-eye lenses, as these will give you too much of a distorted view. Somewhere between 12mm to 24mm, would be a great starting point. Remember, due to the earth’s rotation, you may end up with star trails in your photos. With wider-angle lenses you will be better capable to prevent motion blur in your photos. However, if your aim is to achieve the star trails, while using wide-angle lenses, be prepared for extremely long shutter speeds.
Go low with your ISO
Since you are literally shooting in the dark, you want to use the lowest ISO number as possible. The higher your ISO, the more noise you will introduce in your photos. If you need to increase your ISO to higher, yet not excessively high, to achieve certain shutter speeds, then by all means, do it. Personally, we prefer to limit ourselves to ISO 800, but if you say that your camera is able to manage higher ISO numbers, then use it to your advantage.
Leverage your shutter speed & motion blur
Ah, shutter speed. In our opinion, the key to creativity at night. Generally, you will be using slower shutter speeds to collect as much light as possible. Depending on the aperture and ISO that you set, you set your shutter speed accordingly. It is not impossible to obtain a well-exposed image using shutter speeds of, let’s say, a second or even half a second. This is something that you will have to figure out by trial and error in your next night photography project.
Additionally, you can use shutter speeds creatively to catch the stars as dots of light in your photos, or you could use it to capture star trails. Mind you that the latter does involve extremely long shutter speeds. If you have the time available, and you brought good, like-minded, company with you, we are confident that you will enjoy the process even more.
If you expect to take photos with shutter speeds slower than your slowest setting, which means you will proceed with bulb-mode, please be sure to bring your wired or wireless shutter-release with you. You don’t want to arrive at your location, knowing that your slowest shutter speed is thirty seconds. Sure, it may not be an essential item. But you will possibly, and likely, be missing shots that you would be able to take otherwise.
Don’t go too small with your aperture
In low-light situations, you want to be able to get as much light as possible. In this case, what you want to do is to fully open up your aperture to the max. Though I understand your maximum aperture is lens-dependent, it makes a massive difference if you are using an aperture of f/4 compared to f/11.
In fact, with many lenses, your lens’ performance actually increases when you close it down by one or two stops. If you aim for higher image quality, and you can be more flexible in your shutter speed, you may want to close down your aperture. Various websites provide MTF charts, which help with determining the optical performance of your lenses.
Focus
When doing night photography, you want to set your camera to manual. With the largest aperture and highest ISO number set, you set your shutter speed to, let’s say 4 seconds. You take a photo, double-check both your exposure and focus on the back of your camera, and adjust your focus when necessary. Make sure to be persistent enough to take as many photos as you need to ensure your focus is correct. Remember that your camera will have difficulties to focus in low light situations, hence you will be focusing manually.
A bonus tip is to zoom in on your photo on the back of your camera. “What? You’re able to do that?” In short, yes. Zooming in and out is not only a feature of smartphones, where you can pinch to zoom, though many recent camera will allow you to do that. Such feature is incredibly helpful when you want to determine if your subject is in focus.