Night and low light photography how to's?

[BMWJNKY]

There wasn't a night photo forum so I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this or not but I'm looking for some good introductory information on how to take good low light and night photos especially silhouettes. I really like the look of the trees with no leeves back lit with the last minutes of sun light and would like some info on how to take those kinds of pictures.

[another view]

Hi - I moved this to Help, it's probably the closest fit.

Do you have a spot meter, either handheld or the one built into your camera? This is how I usually would take the shot that you describe. Once the sun has dropped below the horizon, the exposure latitude of a digital sensor or film can't properly expose the last light in the sky and still hold shadow detail. You're looking at the shadow side of the trees because they're in front of you, between you and the sky that you're shooting. Because there is no detail in the shadow, it will be a silhouette. I'd probably set my exposure at 1 or 1-1/3 stops above what the spot meter shows for a bright area of the sky, and know (just from experience) that this will silhouette the trees.

Depends on the situation, but with the higher exposure latitude of negative (print) film, it might be possible to have some detail in the shadows but I never really used negative film for anything like this; just a guess...

[walterick]

Agree with Steve here. The only other thing I can add is BRACKET!

GL

[BMWJNKY]

I'm not looking for detail on the shadow side, I prefer it to look pitch black. But thanks for the tips and when I get my D70s in a few weeks I'll give it a try. Are there any good books that deal with low light photography?

[another view]

You probably won't have to worry about having any detail in the shadows in my example if you're shooting digital (am I right?). One of the complaints about digital is that the exposure latitude is narrower than negative film, but here it's working to your advantage.

If there is some detail, you can adjust it out in Photoshop. Look at the histogram; the left side in particular. You should see the the curve of the histogram get cut off on the right. If it tapers off before it gets all the way to the right side then just use Levels to make it that way.

I haven't found any books that I thought were worthwhile. Really, you'll learn more just by going out and doing it.