There’s something captivating about the nighttime sky and the way that the landscape seems to shimmer underneath the glow of the moon. Photographers with a creative eye often want to capture the beauty of night, but it can be difficult to know which low-light photography settings to use. These night photography tips will help you create breathtaking photos after the sun goes down.
Understanding Night Light and Exposure
In low-light conditions, photographers must increase their exposure time to capture the scene in front of them. Night photography requires you to remain still, patient, and flexible. It can take a bit of work to get the perfect shot.
How Darkness Changes Dynamic Range, Contrast and Color
Dynamic range is a photography term that refers to the range of brightness that a camera can record in one shot. Darkness tends to alter the dynamic range and reduce the overall contrast and color of the image.
Reciprocity, Long Exposures and Signal-to-Noise Tradeoffs
A long exposure is required for most night scenes, and perfecting long exposure night photography can be tricky. The longer your exposure is, the more light the camera will let in. However, it can be difficult to keep the camera still during long exposure shots, so you should have a tripod on hand.
Essential Gear and Setup
In addition to investing in the best cameras for night photography, you will need to purchase additional gear that allows you to photograph effectively after dark.
Tripods, Remote Releases and Stable Platforms
A tripod, remote shutter and stable platform allow you to keep your camera still for long exposure shots, giving you the ability to capture night scenes, such as the aurora borealis or the city lights. The leading tripod techniques for night photography include putting your camera in manual mode and increasing the focal length of your lens.
Fast Lenses, Filters and Practical Carry Systems
When capturing night photography with a DSLR camera, the lens you use plays a crucial role in the shots you can get. The best lenses for night photography meet the following criteria:
- Wide aperture
- Wide focal length
- High sharpness
- Low coma
- Low vignetting
In general, a fast prime lens or a wide-angle lens is recommended for any dark sky location.
Power, Weather Protection and Safety Kits
When working in low-light conditions, you should invest in additional power sources, weather protection gear, and safety kits, all of which can make night photography safer and more effective.
Camera Settings and Focusing
When working with a DSLR camera and shooting at night, it’s best to put your camera into manual mode and adjust the settings accordingly.
Manual Mode, ISO Strategy and Bulb Exposures
When shooting night scenes in manual mode, it’s best to keep your ISO low and widen your aperture. This allows you to capture as much light as possible and create a vivid night image.
Accurate Focusing at Night: AF Assist, Live View and Infinity Checks
Focusing at night can be challenging, but there are strategies that you can use to improve your focus. Infinity focus is widely used by night sky photographers who are capturing the horizon. For example, infinity focus works well for photographing the moon or capturing the Milky Way.
White Balance Choices: Tungsten, Daylight and Custom Kelvin
The white balance that you choose will dictate the type of color that appears in your nighttime image. You can adjust the white balance and color temperature of your image to create a realistic and relatable representation of a night scene.
Urban Night Techniques
If you are looking for night photography ideas, look no further than your nearest city. When the sun goes down, the city comes to life, and there is so much to capture. Knowing the leading city night photography techniques can help you create one-of-a-kind images.
Light Trails, Reflections and Neon Management
Photographing city lights at night is incredibly popular, but also extremely challenging. The best night photographers know how to capture neon reflections and light trails in a way that is captivating and intriguing, yet not distracting.
Blue Hour Versus True Night: When to Shoot
Blue hour refers to the time period in urban areas when the sun has set, but true darkness has not set in. Blue hour is an excellent time for photographing the skyline at night, as it offers more natural light to work with, creating a clearer and more evocative photo.
Managing Flare, Ghosting and High-Contrast Signage
Flare and ghosting can disrupt photographs shot in city areas after dark. By widening your aperture, you can significantly reduce these risks.
Astrophotography Basics
Focusing on capturing celestial objects in the night sky, astrophotography is an advanced specialty area that requires photographers to have a comprehensive understanding of the leading techniques in night photography.
Milky Way Planning, 500 Rule and Star Trackers
To capture the heavenly essence of the Milky Way, you will want to leverage the power of the 500 Rule to create clear and colorful images. These tips can help when photographing the Milky Way:
- Use a wide aperture.
- Set the ISO between 3200 and 6400.
- Set white balance to 4000K.
- Adjust the focus.
- Use a shutter delay of about 2 seconds.
Star Trails: Stacking and Foreground Integration
Star trails are a popular photographic effect that uses time-lapse photography at night to show the path of a star. It highlights the circular rotations of the Earth and creates a moving image for people to reflect on. Foreground composition is crucial for making the star trails effect, and you may want to invest in an intervalometer to achieve it.
Moonlight, Aurora and Meteor Showers
When trying to photograph the moonlight or a meteor shower, choose a location with minimal light pollution. You can use a light pollution map to identify dark sky locations for astrophotography.
Composition and Visual Story
As with any photograph, composition is the key to telling a compelling visual story, and composition is critically important to successfully capturing images at night.
Leading Lines, Silhouettes and Negative Space
Leading lines, silhouettes and negative space play an essential role in nighttime photography composition. Silhouettes are used to offer backlight to the subject of the image, while negative space can be strategically used to highlight a particular part of the image.
Balancing Sky and Ground: Foreground Anchors
When focusing on the horizon or attempting to capture the moon in the sky, you often need something in the foreground to frame the image. Strategic foreground composition anchors the image, allowing you to tell a more compelling visual story.
Color Harmony at Night: Mixed Light Solutions
Achieving color harmony at night can be challenging, especially when adjusting the white balance and color temperature of your image. For many photographers, color harmony is a personal preference. However, it is best to strive for a correct color balance to create an image that is both memorable and relatable.
Noise Reduction and Image Quality
Noise can be an ongoing challenge for night photographers, but there are noise reduction techniques that you can use to create clear, high-quality images after dark.
In-Camera Long-Exposure NR Versus Stacking
By setting your camera to bulb mode, you can manually adjust long-exposure shutter speeds directly within the camera. Utilizing the camera’s long-exposure settings is the best way to reduce noise in nighttime images, rather than attempting noise reduction stacking in the post-production process.
Expose-to-the-Right (ETTR) Safely at Night
Expose-to-the-Right (ETTR) is a tried-and-true digital photography technique that allows you to get the correct exposure for your image. It can be used safely at night and is recommended for nighttime photographers. In practice, ETTR means increasing exposure so your image’s histogram leans toward the right (the brighter side) without clipping highlights—capturing more light to improve shadow detail and overall signal-to-noise. At night, “safe” ETTR usually involves shooting RAW, monitoring your histogram and highlight warnings (“blinkies”), nudging exposure by roughly +0.3 to +1.0 EV, and protecting bright point sources (streetlights, the moon) by dialing exposure back until clipping disappears. You can also bracket exposures to hedge against blown highlights, then pull exposure back in post for a clean, low-noise result.
De-noising, Sharpening and Color Cleanup in Post
In some cases, you can use RAW editing techniques to de-noise and sharpen your images. Enhancing night photos in post-production is quite common, due to the many challenges associated with photographing images after dark.
Post-Processing Workflow
Capturing the city lights after sunset or a meteor shower over the horizon is only the first step. Next, you need to perfect the images during the editing process.
RAW Development: Tone Curves and Shadow Recovery
Most photographers specializing in night photography capture RAW images, allowing them more creative freedom during the development process. In particular, color tones are enhanced and perfected, giving photographers the ability to bring out the blue and violet tones of the night sky.
Color Cast Removal and Selective HSL Control
When the lighting at night casts an improper color on an image, photographers can work to remove the color cast during the editing process to achieve more creative control over their image.
Blends, Stacks and Time-Lapse Assembly
It’s during the editing process that time-lapse images are assembled to create images that show movement in the night sky over a period of time.
Weather, Planning and Safety
Because night photographers have to work in incredibly low light conditions when shooting, proper planning is necessary. A safety checklist can help night photographers ensure they have all the necessary tools and equipment to capture the desired images without increasing the risk of damage or injury.
Forecasts, Humidity and Dew Control
Before visiting any dark sky location, check the weather forecast to ensure the conditions are right for your shoot. Being aware of humidity levels and implementing dew control measures can help you protect your camera and equipment and improve your battery management.
Light Pollution Maps and Dark-Sky Etiquette
You can use a light pollution map to find locations that offer unfiltered access to the night sky. This is particularly important for astrophotography. Photographers should follow etiquette and protocols, such as:
- Be aware of your own light.
- Honestly represent the night sky.
- Follow all Leave No Trace principles in dark sky locations.
Solo and Group Safety: Location, Timing and Communication
Whether traveling alone or with a group of photographers, it’s essential to clearly communicate your travel plans, including where you plan to go and when you expect to arrive. Others should be aware of your location and timing at all times.
Additionally, ensure you have the necessary equipment on hand. A headlamp red light, for example, allows you to have night vision without introducing artificial light into the landscape.
Global Night Photography Destinations and Perspectives
By examining standard night photography techniques around the world, you can develop new night photography ideas and approaches:
Tokyo, Japan: Neon Streets and Rain-Soaked Reflections
With its bright lights and dreary weather, Tokyo is the perfect place to capture those neon reflection shots that urban night photographers prefer.
Paris, France: Blue Hour Bridges and Seine Highlights
The City of Lights is an ideal backdrop for nighttime photography. Take advantage of the blue hour — that fleeting time between sunset and true darkness — and capture images of the bridges stretching over the Seine River.
New York, USA: Skyline Panoramas and Traffic Streams
The iconic New York City skyline simply beckons to be photographed at night. There are so many locations to capture the skyline at night, but don’t forget to head into the city itself to get those iconic traffic streams.
Atacama, Chile: High-Altitude Milky Way and Airglow
Considered to be one of the best stargazing destinations in the world, the Atacama Desert is the perfect place to capture the Milky Way. There are endless options for foreground frames in this rugged terrain.
Reykjavik, Iceland: Aurora Layers Over Coastal Landforms
Quickly becoming the preferred destination among astrophotographers, Reykjavik offers stunning coastal landforms that perfectly frame shots of the aurora borealis in all its glory.
Dubai, UAE: Glass-and-Steel Reflections With Controlled Flare
As the shining beacon of urban modernity, Dubai is the perfect place to capture city architecture against the night sky. Controlled flares can be used to showcase the bright lights of this sparkling city.
Sydney, Australia: Harbor Lights and Mixed-Temperature Color
The harbor lights in Sydney provide you with a chance to work with a wide range of colors in the night sky, ultimately giving you the freedom and flexibility to create an image that suits your mood.
Field Exercises and Prompts
These exercises and prompts can help you perfect your approach to night photography while you are on location:
Ten-Minute Light-Trail Study at an Intersection
If you are looking to perfect the art of light trails, consider going to a busy intersection and conducting a quick ten-minute study. This will help you learn more about the photography techniques required to achieve this effect, and explore the editing processes that can improve the final image.
Milky Way Foreground Scout and Test Frames
Foreground composition plays a crucial role in capturing the Milky Way effectively. By searching for foreground locations, you can test various frames and determine which ones will work best for your Milky Way shots.
Color-Cast Hunt: Correcting Mixed Lighting Sets
In a dark location, you will want to test the color cast and adjust the color accordingly. Your white balance tungsten settings can help you reduce the impact of incandescent lighting and achieve a clear white color.
Discover How to Shoot in Low Light at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design
Your portfolio should include a wide range of images, including photos captured at night. At Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, we offer an on-campus Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography degree and an online Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography degree, both of which cover leading night photography techniques, allowing you to build a comprehensive portfolio.
Request more information about our fine arts degree programs today.
FAQs: Night Photography
Q1: What settings work best for city night scenes?
When photographing a city at night, start around ISO 100-400, f/8-f/11 for sharpness and 5 to 30 seconds on a tripod. Use a 2-second timer or remote, and set white balance to tungsten or custom Kelvin to tame color casts.
Q2: How do I focus accurately in the dark?
Use live view at maximum magnification on a bright edge, switch to manual focus and confirm with focus peaking, if available. Tape the ring to prevent drift.
Q3: How can I reduce noise in night images?
Expose generously without clipping highlights, keep ISO as low as practical, shoot RAW and stack multiple frames with a median blend. You can also use modern denoising tools.
Q4: What is the 500 Rule for stars?
When photographing the stars, divide 500 by the focal length of the camera. For high-resolution sensors, try 400 or 500 for crisper points.
Q5: Do I need a star tracker for Milky Way photos?
No, you do not need a star tracker for photographing the Milky Way. Combining a fast wide angle lens with the 500 Rule works well.
Q6: How do I manage mixed lighting colors at night?
Shoot RAW, set a neutral white balance for the primary subject, then selectively adjust hue, saturation and lightness. Consider shooting multiple frames for localized color correction during the post-production process.
Q7: Any safety tips for late-night shoots?
Preparation and weather planning is key for late-night shoots. Always scout in daylight, bring a friend, share your location, carry a headlamp and keep spare batteries on hand. Be mindful of trip hazards, dark sky etiquette and local regulations.
