low light & night pics

[subhuman]

I have recently been trying to take more low light & night time pictures
(I just love the look), but havent had much success, I used 400 speed film,
the correct setting the camera calls for,& I open the aperture to let in more
light, but all the pictures come out blurry, could it be that I'm not using my
tripod when I should, or should I try my best to do it manually?
I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks and I want to be better at it.....
besides its that time of year (Halloween) in my opinion a great time to
take darker pictures......

[Canuck935]

Tripod, Tripod, Tripod!!! If you are not using one that is the reason your low light shots are blurry. If you are using a tripod and it's not motion blur of the scene then the focus may be off due to low light focusing issues.

Unrelated to blur but exposure wise you may want to check the reciprocity for your film.

[Ronnoco]

Actually photos at dusk are better, when the lights are on, but there is still enough light in the sky to provide some detail in otherwise dark areas.

Ronnoco

[subhuman]

Yeah that was part of what I was talking about, I also like
them but they also come out blurry

[another view]

Back up a second, here - metering is still metering regardless of how much light you're working with. You have three controls to work with - aperture, shutter speed and film ISO speed. The film speed can only be changed when you change film (to a faster or slower speed), so that leaves aperture and shutter speed. If you're in an auto mode and let more light in by opening up the aperture, then the shutter speed will be faster by that same amount. For example, if you open up the lens two stops (ex from f5.6 to f2.8) then the shutter speed will be two stops faster (ex from 1/30 to 1/125).

The shutter speed that you get by doing this still might not be fast enough to stop motion. It depends on the shutter speed and what the motion is. Obviously it takes a faster shutter speed to stop an airplane's propeller than someone walking. Blur isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it depends on what you want the photograph to look like. It takes a lot of practice to know what shutter speed to use to get the effect you want, and even then it's still kind of a guess.

There's also camera shake that can cause the whole shot to be blurry, but look at this differently than the motion I described above. The rule (or at least a good starting point) is to use a shutter speed of at least the reciprocal of the lens focal length. In other words, with a 50mm lens use a shutter speed of 1/50 or faster. This still might take a bit of practice (especially for us coffee drinkers!) and you can probably do better than that with more practice; maybe 1/30. This will keep stationary objects (buildings, etc) sharp but won't necessarily stop anything in motion. It's still best to use a tripod when you can.

If you were to use a tripod with slow shutter speeds, you might get some sharp areas and some blurry areas. This can be a great result (depending on what you want). Let's say you're in the middle of a city and want to blur the people a little bit, but blur the cars a lot so their headlights and tail lights leave light trails across the frame. Try a shutter speeds ranging from 1/4 to a couple of seconds. Use whatever aperture value that you need for proper exposure, and you'll probably come back with some good images.

One last thing (or chapter in this book), films sometimes need additional exposure at slow shutter speeds due to something called reciprocity failure. If you're using negative (print) film, I'd expose it at ISO200 (set the camera so it thinks it's loaded with ISO200 film). This will give you one additional stop and you won't have any problems. If you're using slide film it becomes a little tricky - you'd have to be exact as usual, and use the information on the film's data sheet (either on the film manufacturer's website or printed on the inside of the box). However, there's really no right or wrong with exposure as long as you get the result you want, remember that. This is especially true with low light photography.