A Guide to Night Photography

Tip 1: Use a tripod

When you photograph at night, you often work with slow shutter speeds. If you hold your camera in your hand, you run the risk of getting motion blur in your photos. You can prevent this by placing your camera on a sturdy tripod.

Tip 2: Turn off image stabilisation

When you choose to use a tripod, that is your stabiliser. If your camera or lens also tries to stabilise the image on top of that, it can actually cause blur. That is why it is best to turn this function off for a while.

Tip 3: Focus carefully

Focusing in the dark is easier said than done. Autofocus can run into problems in low light. That is why it is useful to use your camera’s live view to focus carefully, or to focus manually.

Tip 4: Work with a remote control

To be even more certain that no motion blur appears in your photo, you can use a remote control. When pressing the shutter button, the camera can accidentally move. You can prevent this by controlling it from a distance.

Tip 5: Check your histogram

With the histogram, you can immediately see whether your photo is underexposed or overexposed. If the graph leans more towards the left, there is a lot of dark in your photo, and vice versa. It is useful to use a histogram as a tool, but ultimately you decide whether you think a photo is properly exposed or not.

Tip 6: Prepare well

Good preparation is half the work. By deciding in advance where you want to photograph and which gear you need, you will be well prepared. Also check the weather forecast. That way, you know whether there will be a clear starry sky or whether you need to protect your equipment extra carefully against rain.

Tip 7: Make use of the blue hour

The blue hour is the moment for stunning night photography. The blue hour is part of twilight when it becomes day or night outside and, despite the name, it often only lasts around twenty to forty minutes. You may be familiar with ‘the golden hour’, when the light outside turns golden. The blue hour comes before or after this golden hour. In the morning, the blue hour is around 30 minutes before sunrise, just before the golden hour. In the evening, the blue hour takes place around 10 to 20 minutes after sunset, so just after the golden hour. The soft light and deep blue colour in the sky create a beautiful balance between the sky and your subject, such as a city.

Use a low ISO value

The ISO value determines the light sensitivity with which your photo is taken. You may be tempted to set it high because it is dark outside, but you will probably be using a tripod and do not need to be afraid of slow shutter speeds. So set the ISO value as low as possible to prevent unnecessary noise. Star photography is an exception to the rule, but we will tell you more about that later in this blog.

Choose a small aperture

At first, you set the aperture as you always would. Do you want a shallow depth of field? Then go for a large aperture. In night photography, depth of field plays a smaller role, because you often photograph with a wide-angle lens. That is why it is often better to choose a smaller aperture between f/11 and f/16. Many lenses also give a sharper result at that aperture. With a smaller aperture, small light sources, such as lamp posts, also turn into little stars in the photo. This creates a stunning effect.

Increase the shutter speed

To complete the exposure triangle, we of course cannot ignore shutter speed. We have already mentioned this setting earlier in this blog and it is probably clear by now: use a tripod and increase the shutter speed! This is especially useful with static subjects. If you are dealing with moving subjects, such as cars or trees in the wind, then you do need to keep thinking carefully about whether your shutter speed is not too long. Above all, play around with it!

Set your white balance manually

A very important part of night photography is white balance, or the colour temperature of your photo. Natural light and artificial light each have a different colour temperature. If you let your camera figure it out by itself, it will probably get confused by the presence of so many different types of light, such as natural evening light, lamp posts and other artificial light sources. This can cause your photo to turn out more yellow than you had hoped, for example. So set your white balance manually. You can also choose to photograph in RAW, allowing you to correct the white balance in post-processing.

Starry sky

The starry sky is often enchanting. A true astronomical work of art and a beautiful subject to capture. If you want to capture the starry sky, it is best to photograph in nature on a cloudless night. Light pollution in cities makes stars less visible.

Star photography requires different settings than the ones we mentioned earlier. To capture as much light as possible from the stars, you need to open up the aperture and increase the ISO value. For example, use an ISO value of 1600 or 3200, depending on how much noise your camera produces at these light sensitivities.

Because the earth is constantly rotating, the stars in your photo change position. This is why the ‘golden 400 rule’ was created. With this, you can determine the maximum shutter speed at which your stars remain points and therefore do not become light trails. The rule is as follows:

400 / (focal length (mm) × crop factor) = maximum shutter speed in seconds.

Tricky, we understand. That is why we will give you a calculation example. For example, you are photographing with a Canon EOS 90D (crop factor: 1.6) and an 18-55mm lens at 18mm. Then the ‘golden 400 rule’ is:

400 / 18 x 1.6 = 13.9 seconds

This means that, in theory, you can use a shutter speed of around 13 to 14 seconds to prevent light trails. Still, this is often also a matter of trial and error. In addition, light trails can sometimes be beautiful. So be sure to experiment!

City photography

You do not always have to go into nature. There is also plenty to photograph in our cities. Think, for example, of the old canals in Amsterdam or the grand modern architecture in Rotterdam. But there is also plenty of beauty to capture at night during a city trip abroad. During ‘the blue hour’, natural light and artificial light come together in a city.

Also look for water in the city, such as a river or a lake. The combination of a slow shutter speed and water that keeps moving continuously creates very ‘soft’ water in your photo. You can also use this to capture a reflection.

Light trails

Of course, there is much more you can do with moving light. By standing at a busy traffic point in a city or along a motorway, you can take beautiful pictures with light trails! This happens because the lights of the cars move through your frame, causing them to appear as light trails in your photo. The longer the shutter speed, the more light trails from cars you will see in your photos. It is wise to play around with your shutter speed, because too much light is not always beautiful either. It is best to adjust your shutter speed to the amount of traffic.