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.

Capturing Skylines

When photographing cities at night, you might be amazed at the brightness of the city lights, how they affect the meter, and just how much light the camera is able to pick up. In most cases at night to get the appropriate level of darkness in a scene, you need to underexpose at least slightly.

By using an exposure of 8 seconds at f/8 at ISO 100, the skyline is very distinct against this sky, which is just beginning to see some morning color.

When shooting a city at night, though, with the brightness of the headlights, the streetlights, and the lights from the buildings, you may even be able to just use the straight meter reading and one of the auto modes.

Using the automatic modes and the exposure compensation might actually be better than using manual as a learning tool for people who are still working on mastering exposure. That may seem counter intuitive, but unless you are someone who writes down what the meter reading said and then what the manual exposure was, there is no way to determine exactly how you worked with or against the meter reading when you go to looking at the camera data. When you set the camera up in manual mode, it only records the exposure data; it doesn't tell you what the meter said. In Aperture Priority, for example, when you see the exposure data plus the exposure compensation, you know exactly what the exposure was compared to what the meter was telling you to do.

Mastering your exposures by looking at the camera data in Photoshop Elements or Bridge works only if you actually look at and compare the photograph and determine what works and what doesn't.

Because of the brightness of the city lights, there are two times of day when shooting the sky seems to work best — when it is cloudy and after dusk, or way before dawn. The reason that those times are better is because being able to actually see some texture and color in the sky goes a long way toward separating the buildings from the sky. If you shoot very early or quite late after sunset, while there is a tiny bit of light still in the sky, it will still be apparent that you are photographing at night, but the sky tells a better story. Shooting when it is very cloudy also makes for an interesting sky because of the light pollution. The glow of the city lights reflecting back from the city creates an eerie glow in the sky, and it makes something more of the sky than having it just go black, as in this photo.

Not only does the stormy weather put texture in the sky, but the wetness on the surfaces also increases the richness and reflections and color on the ground. The exposure here was 1.5 seconds at f/5.6 at ISO 200.

Even when there is just a small bit of texture in the sky, it is still better than just all black.

The exposure here was 6 seconds at f/7.1 at ISO 125 with exposure compensation set at –1. The small bit of sky still adds quite a bit to the skyline, and setting the white balance to tungsten works to make the scene look clean.

Just like shooting a landscape in the day, attempting to put something in the sky to give it drama and dimension is exactly the same when the sun is shining elsewhere. Compositionally, shooting skylines at night and landscapes is similar. Placing something in the foreground for emphasis and scale makes for a more interesting photograph.

Some might ask, why can't you see the stars with such long exposures? The answer is that the city lights still provide a massive amount of light as compared to the small amount of light that the sun puts out. The exposures simply aren't long enough to capture the starlight, and if they were, the city exposure would be totally washed out.

Taking Photos at Dusk

When just a tiny bit of sunlight is available, using a spot meter is important to get the right exposure of the small patches of sunlight.

Getting the spot meter reading on the tiny bit of sunlight nails the exposure. Still a lot of sun is hitting that tiny spot as the exposure here is 1/180 second at f/7.1 at ISO 200.

Using the other metering functions can make for a very washed out looking image as the averaging meters average all that dark with the small amount of bright. To get the correct exposure using a center-weighted or evaluative meter, you need to use some underexposure, either manually or with the exposure compensation.

When shooting a more urban shot, you have a lot of city lights, and the color is great at dusk because the ambient light is still there to give some definition to the buildings, but you can still see the man-made lighting scheme. This time is a favorite for a lot of architectural photographers and people who are trying to balance the light of the scene and the light of the sky. Sunsets are often hastened by inclement weather as the light gets lower much sooner.

Usually, the camera can't deal with the disparity in light indoors and light outside. For short periods of time, those lights can be balanced, usually at dusk. This image is exposed at 1/13 second at f/4 at ISO 200.

This may be an advantage in shooting because the sunset will stay much the same for a longer period of time instead of going rapidly from bright daylight to dark nighttime.

Shooting in the Afterglow

Often, quite a bit of light is still left in the sky long after the sunlight has left the scene. This time is called the afterglow and is still a great time to shoot some low-light shots. Many times this light comes from the glow of the reflected light coming off of the still lit clouds. Many times the light in the afterglow has its own light quality. It is not hard, yet there are rich shadows, and it is not soft light, but the tones definitely have a soft texture. In this photo, the sky is blue, and there is definition in the clouds, but the light hitting the balanced rock is still very directional, even though the sun has been below the horizon for a while.

By comparing a sunset chart and the camera data with the image file, this image was taken about 20 minutes after the sunset. The exposure was 4 seconds at f/8 at ISO 200.

There isn't really a name for the time long before the sunrise, but this pre-sunrise is very much like the light of the afterglow. Earlier in the day, when almost no light is in the sky, the reflections of the city lights almost perfectly balance the light in the sky. To just look at the scene might make the scene appear far too dark, but letting enough light into the camera with a long shutter speed can cause the scene to be bright and rich with color. Long exposures not only let in a lot of light, but because the sensor is on for so long, they can also create additional noise in the image. If you are going to all the trouble of shooting long exposures, make sure that your ISO is as low as possible.

Shooting water at dawn and dusk can also make for exceptional lighting. Much like shooting a creek or river, shooting long exposures of waves moving across a body of water adds a slight glow and smoothness to the water. The water is constantly moving, and the little white caps and the reflections off of the water are constantly moving and oscillating; yet, because of the low light level and small aperture any whites are muted and just add to the softness of the water, as in picture.

This image was taken at an exposure of 30 seconds at f/4 at ISO 100. The city lights give the pilings enough of an amber glow, complementing the blue of the lake long before the sun rises.

It is also possible to shoot a scene when the afterglow has almost totally faded and the scene is lit with just a small bit of ambient light still in the sky and the light of a full moon. This necessitates long shutter speeds and large apertures to get enough light into the camera. Shooting during the twilight can actually create a scene that still appears to be nearly daylight.

Nearly after the sunset, and probably two hours after this valley dropped into shadow, using an exposure of 30 seconds at f/8 at ISO 100 the scene is almost indistinguishable from a daylight scene.

Sunsets and Silhouettes

In most cases, shooting a sunset and silhouettes actually entails shortening the exposure. When shooting in low light, it usually is a low contrast, such as the above photo. That long exposure was with the light hitting the scene matching the light coming from the sky. When shooting more toward the sunset and with the sky still bright, a silhouette is created when underexposing the scene, making the shadows darker.

Some digital cameras actually have silhouette settings. Silhouettes can easily be created by getting a meter reading off of the brightest part of the scene and then setting your exposure from there, and in many cases, underexposing from that bright part. When shooting a sunset, or dusk scene, the brightest area of the scene is the sky and it easily creates a silhouette of objects placed in the foreground.

Although being able to see all of the detail in this scene would make for an exposure of several seconds, shooting at 1/20 second at f/11 at ISO 200 creates a very dynamic silhouette.

Even in just slightly diminished light, the opportunity for a silhouette is there by using the contrast of the scene. Getting low and getting any sort of dark object against a brighter subject and then underexposing the scene makes a silhouette. This can even be done with moonlight hitting the clouds. One very interesting thing to do is to work with your white balance to force a particular feel into the scene. In this photo, setting the white balance to tungsten outside on a gloomy dark day makes an already blue feeling scene to look blue literally.

Setting the white balance to incandescent adds blue to the scene, and when underexposing at 1/60 second at f/11 at ISO 200, a very moody and dark silhouette scene is made.

Sunsets are not necessarily considered true low-light situations, but when shooting sunsets and silhouettes, you are essentially shooting layers of shadows. Unlike a scene in which the sun's light is virtually gone, ample contrast exists to maximize the levels of the shadows, especially when the scene is backlit. When shooting into the end of the sunset, the layers of the background become ever more apparent, such as the mountains and trees in this photo.

The last light of the day makes a silhouette of the Joshua tree and layers of mountains in the background. The exposure here was 1/125 sec, at f/2.8 with ISO 200.

Creating Soft, Moody Light with Low Light

Softness in a photograph can come from the light source itself, the subject, or the atmospheric conditions of the scene. Atmospheric conditions would be fog, haze, or smoke. The material in the air diffuses the light and the contrast of the scene and gives the light something to reflect off, creating rays of light in the haze wherever there is a direct light source. Most notably, this happens when the sunlight filters through lifting fog. This effect is also seen in various movies and television programmes where there are flashlights. In this photo, all of the light comes from the light of the firemen's flashlights cutting through the smoke and the haze. Not only does this make the actual light rays more visible, but it also broadens it out.

Beams of light make for dramatic lines within the image as the flashlights shine through the smoke. The exposure here is set at 1/6 second at f/4.5 at ISO 1600. Photo by Jarod Trow.

Sometimes, the subject and the light combine to make a photograph very soft. Anytime that a light source is diffused - a lamp shade, an umbrella, a soft box, a translucent reflector, or even fingers over a flashlight - the light becomes softer as the rays of light spread out, bounce around and reflect against the diffuser.

This means much of the light is lost, and only a little is active in creating the exposure. Having such a small light or low level of light usually makes for a dark scene. There just isn't enough light to brighten anything, but just because the scene is dark, that doesn't mean that the scene has a lot of contrast. No real highlights are on the face of the girl in this photo, and the shadows there are very soft and diffused.

It doesn't even matter what the source of this light is, because it is so small and soft, all you really see is the softness of the light on the little girl's face. The exposure here is 1 second at f/2.8 at ISO 400. Photo by Holly Jordan.

Taking Advantage of Additional Light Sources

Low-light images are often made even better with the addition of some sort of light to help build interest or emphasis in the image. This additional light can take the form of a strobe or incandescent, or the light can be from more esoteric sources like headlights from a car, or a sparkler.

This is a common and easy way of using additional light sources to put emphasis on a subject in a low-light scene. When the light gets very low, the strobe makes up the bulk of the light for the subject, but to get the low lights in the background to expose, a longer shutter speed needs to be used. When a slow shutter speed is used in conjunction with a flash to make the image, it is called slow-sync or dragging the shutter. In this photo, the camera is set on a tripod to maintain sharpness with the slow shutter speed.

Using a slow sync, the flash fires at a shutter speed of 1/20 second which lets the background lights burn in while the flash perfectly exposes the subject. The exposure here is 1/20 second at f/2.8 at ISO 200.

Flash can be used to augment even a distant low-light scene by adding some light in a place where there otherwise may be just darkness or a silhouette. Shooting long exposures often means that aperture is also small, letting very little light in. By taking a strobe unit off the top of the camera, you can angle the light so it provides more of a "crosslight". With a long exposure, you also don't even need a sync cord or wireless trigger; you can just fire the strobe manually with the test button. If the aperture is so small (high number f-stop), it may take several hits with the flash to build up much of an exposure. Using the strobe like this makes for a much more subtle effect, as seen in the photo.

With the camera locked on the tripod and a very long exposure, firing the strobe manually four or five times gives the rocks just a little bit of definition. The exposure was 25 seconds at f/100 at ISO 100.

Using Rear Sync in Low Light Images

Rear sync, or second curtain sync, refer to the firing of the strobe at the end of the exposure instead of the beginning of it. What happens is that the first blade of the shutter opens to begin the exposure, light builds on the sensor creating the exposure, and just before the second blade comes down to end the exposure, the strobe goes off. This does two things: It freezes the subject at the end of movement and gives the subject a trailing blur as some of the exposure is behind a moving object.

One great thing about using rear curtain strobe in a low-light situation is that you can also use the lights as a design element within the image. A long exposure creates time to move the camera and zoom the lens during the exposure, and with the rear curtain sync, the subject still is properly exposed and frozen by the strobe. Zooming the lens during the exposure makes the lights into trailing light rays or beams. This is an effect that can add a little life to an image that otherwise may be a little bit staid, but it should be used judiciously.

Zooming the lens during the exposure is something you can do only with a long exposure. This exposure is set at 1/5 sec. at f/4.5 at ISO 800. The high ISO helps the background lights stay bright.

One thing about strobes in general is that because the light happens so fast, the flash of light freezes the motion in the image. This is particularly important when the action is happening quickly. Using this ability with the rear sync can make for very dynamic images. When the scene has some light, it helps to register the fast-moving object, and when there are lights on the subject, such as a car with all its lights on, the trails behind the subject add a lot to the effect.

Sometimes being off of the tripod helps, too. The exposure here is 1/4 second at f/2.8 at ISO 400, and with the inconsistency in panning, the lights in the background appear as wavy racing stripes.

Matching Long Exposures With Flash

The second thing that rear curtain sync does is to fill in the amount of light that the exposure needs after the long exposure. For shooting static subjects, using rear curtain sync really helps to better balance the light of the long exposure with the strobe because the computer and the meter have already figured out how much light was required for the exposure; the computer adds enough strobe to finish the exposure.

Using the rear curtain sync made the strobe fire just enough light into the tree to give it a nice glow without overpowering the light on the rocks. The exposure here was 1/30 second at f/8 at ISO 100.

When the light is just right, regular strobes don't even need to be used. Although this section is about flash, think about different kinds of flash...like the flashers on your vehicle. In a 30- second exposure, how many times might those lights flash, each time building up some exposure on the sensor, even though they might barely register in your brain? See this.

The exposure here was set in order to capture the cliff face in the background. The car lights hitting the trees were a total bonus. The exposure was 30 seconds at f/4.8 at ISO 200 with exposure compensation at +1.

Even the flash on a compact digital can help to liven up a scene by forcing the flash to fire. In a landscape scenario, the flash on a compact digital just does not put out that much light, but when a subject is in shadow and there is still a bit of glow after the sunset hitting the rest of the landscape, it can make more of the scene than just a silhouette. Using the flash to brighten the bush in this image helps to separate it as the subject from the far away arch and overall adds balance by bringing a stronger subject to work with the strength of the arches.

To make sure the colors would stay rich and not wash out, the exposure compensation was set to 1/100 second at f/2.8 at ISO 100. The flash puts out just what is needed to balance the exposure with the background.

Capturing the Motion of Lights

You can make light move through a photograph in so many ways that it is hard to just focus on a few. Cityscapes are really great places to look at the lights and work with many different types and colors of light. Unlike a straight landscape, though, by placing the lights from moving cars somehow in the scene, the lights of the cars add a huge sense of frenzy and activity in the place. Even the motion of the leaves in the sky helps to increase the layers and add to the dynamic feel of a city.

After you stake out your scene, make sure it is at angle to capture the movement of the lights through the scene. The exposure for this image is 4 seconds at f/14 at ISO 200.

Use the longest shutter speed that you can, but try not to have an aperture smaller than f/16 or so. The smaller the aperture, the darker the lights of the cars will be. This might be okay if there is substantial traffic, because the lights from the headlights will build up exposure. If there are only a few vehicles, then stay with the wider apertures. On the other hand, if the shot shows cars leaving, and you see more taillights, you may need even faster aperture as taillights are far dimmer than headlights.

Sparklers burn very hot, and at the core, the light of a sparkler is very bright, but it takes a long exposure to get all trails of all the sparks at they come off of the stick. Using a long exposure, you can get a feel for the excitement that kids get when they first light sparklers, seeing the long trails jumping out from the sparkler and falling to the ground.

Sparklers need long exposures, but they do burn hot, so it is possible to use a reasonable aperture. The exposure here was 4 seconds at f/7.6 at ISO 100. Photo by Holly Jordan.

Faster Lenses?

Photographers often throw out the terms "fast lenses" or "faster apertures". This refers to the fact that some lenses have different maximum apertures, allowing for different shutter speeds at a given light level. For example, the zoom that comes with a digital SLR almost certainly has a maximum aperture of f/3.5 or f/4 at the wide setting of the zoom, and f/4.5 or f/5.6 at the telephoto end. A more professional zoom lens has a maximum aperture of f/2.8 all the way through the zoom range. The lens with the maximum aperture is called a faster lens because it allows for a faster shutter speed at the same given amount of light when the aperture is wide open.

Long Exposures for Firework Celebrations

Shooting fireworks is it's own art form, posing several challenges. It is difficult to begin with because you have to set up the camera in the dark; you also have to focus on a black sky and try to get an exposure while the camera is pointed at that black sky. The challenges never end! So here are five rules of thumb for shooting fireworks:

Rule 1 — Set the camera to f/8 or f/11. Use f/8 if you want to see some color in the sky, and the light show is relatively small. Use f/11 if you want more of a black sky, and the fireworks are at a major celebration, like the Independence Day Fireworks in Boston or Washington, D.C. Bigger cities simply have bigger and brighter fireworks.

Rule 2 — Set the rest of your exposure correctly. Use ISO 100. Your aperture and the ISO are making the entire exposure.

Rule 3 — Set the shutter to B, bulb, or time. Choose the setting on your camera that allows you to open and close the shutter at your desire.

Rule 4 — Put your camera on a tripod and use a cable release. These two items are intertwined, so they count as one rule! A cable release is not absolutely necessary, but it is very hard to photograph fireworks successfully without one.

Rule 5 — Set the camera's focus manually. A switch somewhere on your camera or the lens allows you to manually focus and leave it there. You can probably just look at the lens barrel and set the focus to infinity. After your first exposure, check the focus on the LCD screen. Most digital cameras have the function to zoom into your image and check critical focus. Use it on the first one so that all the rest of your shots are in focus.

Once you've done these five items, watch and listen for the launch of the fireworks. A certain pace will start to evolve as the show proceeds. You can open the shutter before the launch because there is little to nothing in the sky to create an exposure until the shell is launched and explodes. Keep the shutter open until it has burned out to get the full effect of each shell. This may be difficult during the finale. Shooting more than one explosion at a time often results in overexposure as the light just builds up on the sensor.

Keeping some part of the environment in the scene helps to define the photo and gives it further definition, scale, and sense of place. Whether it is a local park with your neighbors or the Brooklyn Bridge in the scene, shoot at least a few with some elements of the environment.

Keeping the shutter open for the entire burst is important; otherwise, you can't fully capture the shape of the burst. The exposure of this image is 8.4 seconds at f/8 at ISO 100.

Now for more abstract fireworks shots, don't hesitate to break any and all of those rules of thumb. For example, try breaking Rule 4 — and handhold your camera. Try to time the bursts, but otherwise you can create some really interesting shots by just trying different things.

This is a handheld fireworks shot, and it has such a cool feel to it. The exposure is 4 seconds at f/7.6 at ISO 100.

Carnivals and fairs are also very interesting places to capture the motion of lights. Shooting carnivals and the like is very similar to shooting fireworks, but because the lights on rides are so much brighter and more repetitious, you probably need to stop down some more. In case you want to experiment a little, you might start with checking on an exposure using the evaluative meter with Aperture Priority and the exposure compensation set to –2/3.

The biggest thing you want to look for in shooting rides is to capture the sense of motion. In order to do this, try to get the longest shutter speed possible. After you have your exposure set up with a long shutter and small aperture, the biggest problem is waiting for the rides to start and stop and trying to get multiple rises going at the same time

Getting all three of the rides going at the same time was quite a lengthy process. The exposure was set in manual at 13 seconds at f/22 at ISO 100.

To help increase the feel of motion, tension, and activity, try tilting the camera slightly. When doing it slightly, it needs to be enough that it looks purposeful, 10–15 degrees or more; otherwise, if it is too slight of an angle, it just looks like you made a mistake. This can also help to fill the frame with light better when other things are happening with the light in the scene, such as the blur of the people at the bottom of this photo.

The texture of the Zipper is very interesting with all of the tiny lines of light, both in circles and in wavy lines. The exposure here was 10 seconds at f/16 at ISO 100.

Have Fun!

Most importantly, have fun experimenting with night photography. It poses a unique set of challenges, but the opportunity is there to take some stunning photographs. Feel free to share links to your favourites in the comments!