Полное руководство по фотографированию ночью и при слабом освещении

The Comprehensive Guide to Low-Light and Night Photography

Your Best Friend, the Tripod

Although not all low-light photographs are made while using a tripod, most of them are. In order to get the best results — meaning steady, sharp and solid images — a tripod must be used. Tripods need not be expensive, but they should be sturdy enough to hold the camera still in a slight breeze. With the size of digital cameras getting smaller and smaller, this is ever more important as the camera's weight might not help to hold the tripod still.

A couple of additional things help keep the camera from blurring. The first thing is making sure that all of the leg extensions are nice and tight. If your tripod uses a twisting type lock, then make sure that you twist it sufficiently. If it has one of the many kinds of lever style locks for the legs, keep the nuts and bolts properly tensioned so that the tripod stays upright and solid even when there is some weight placed on it. Most tripods even come with the proper sized little wrench to keep everything tight. Keep that wrench in your camera bag, and when you are waiting for a sunset or the like, take a minute to tighten your tripod.

Getting some additional weight on the tripod also helps to keep it rock solid. Some professional photographers may go as far as hanging a sandbag or two from the tripod in order to keep everything still. Sandbags may be overkill for most, but hanging your camera bag from the tripod to weight it down does the same thing, without requiring a bunch of sandbags.

Using the strongest tripod in the world is all for nothing if your hand moves the camera every time you touch the shutter release. Almost every digital camera has some sort of socket for a cable release or remote trigger. At a pinch, you can also use the camera's self-timer in place of a cable release. If you set it to longer, it actually may mean less vibration on the camera than a cable release. Some of the more advanced digital cameras even have the option of locking the mirror in the up position before firing the shutter to eliminate all vibration. For extreme critical sharpness, the mirror-up function can be vital.