Night Photography

[Unit-14]

Ok, guys I need your help. I have a Cannon Digital Rebel, I have no extra flash or anything like that, and a 75-300 Cannon Image Stabilizer lense. I was on a trip on 9/11 and I came across a unique event. Firefighters and Policemen parked their vehicles with sirens on, over a freeway bridge and had a flag on top of one of the Firefighters ladders. I took about 50 pictures and not 1 came out clean, it was either way to dark or really blurry. What settings should I use in night shots with lots of light. action (like I just said or a city at night) or in a setting where there is very lttle light at all. Any help would be greatly Appriciated. Thanks.

[mjm]

shoot fully manual or time priority (Tv). adjust exposure to suit your needs. ISO 200 works well for me.

[Chunk]

Ok, guys I need your help. I have a Cannon Digital Rebel, I have no extra flash or anything like that, and a 75-300 Cannon Image Stabilizer lense. I was on a trip on 9/11 and I came across a unique event. Firefighters and Policemen parked their vehicles with sirens on, over a freeway bridge and had a flag on top of one of the Firefighters ladders. I took about 50 pictures and not 1 came out clean, it was either way to dark or really blurry. What settings should I use in night shots with lots of light. action (like I just said or a city at night) or in a setting where there is very lttle light at all. Any help would be greatly Appriciated. Thanks.

One of the most important settings for night photgraphy is setting the camera on a tripod. With limited light you are going to be using long exposures so minimizing camera movement is paramount.
What I would probably do in your situation is set my camera to a high ISO (you should already have figured out how high you can go without getting unacceptable noise) and get close to some object (say a fire truck) that I want to be properly exposed so that it fills much of the frame and a take a shot in one of the AE modes. If the shot seems close to the right exposure make note of the aperture and shutterspeed and set the camera to manual with those settings as a starting point and vary them for what ever DOF or motion blurring that I want, bumping aperture open a stop for each halving of shutter speed and vice versa and take whatever compositions you want. Monitor your results as you are shooting and adapt as nescessary.
If in your shot the fire truck is OK but something you think is more important is too dark, open up some (or slow the shutter) and try again. You will not be able to get everything exposed well, so choose what is most important and try to get them right.
I don't know how your camera does with autofocussing in those conditions so you may want to switch that to manual as well.
Shoot in the Raw so that you record all the info you can and you can select low contrast, etc in the conversion if needed.
Don't shoot of 50 shots in goofy lighting without checking the results and adapting. It's especially nice that digicams allow us to delete crappy shots on the go.

[Sebastian]

Tripod, tripod, tripod, the only way to get really clean nighttime exposures. Set it on the tripod, stop down the aperture, use the lowest ISO and keep playing with shutter speeds to get a look you like.