Sometimes you are presented with a good photographic opportunity, out of the blue. You are just having fun walking around the river bank with some pals, while suddenly you hear loud bang and beautiful lights filling up the night sky. You take out your camera and prepare to take the next one (you always bring your camera with you, right? ). You set your camera to aperture priority and tried to take some shots, but because of the low light (heck, the sky is pitch black) your camera set the shutter to 2 seconds to compensate. You got the shot, but its totally blurry. You then change to setting to shutter priority to 1/50 second to avoid camera shake. But all you are getting is pitch black images. You wonder what you should do now?
I reckon most of you have experienced that type of event before. Now we will explore several options you can try to (hopefully) get a decent night shoot without using tripod.
Increase the ISO rating
Maybe its just me, but I think grainy images is much better than no usable image at all.
ISO 400 1.6" f16 - My first try of the night. I was bracing againts a light pole to gain stability. Notice the fireworks are sharp but the background lights are very blurry. Which give this image a little bit more additional impact.
Bracing Your Camera/Your Body Against Something Solid
There is two way of doing this. If you are using SLR without swivel screen, the it will be lots of trial and error. But if you have point and shoot with swivel, this will be easier. This is fairly easy. Just put your camera on the ground/fence/car or anything solid, but pointed up to the fireworks, with your right hand on the shutter, but bracing on the solid object. Usually with some practice you can get pretty good steady images.
ISO 400 f4.5 1/2" - I brace my camera on the fence to get this shot. Set the focus manually to infinity, then we are good to go.
The other way is to brace your body against a big solid object. Maybe a solid wall or a electric pole. Make sure you dont destroy it
Well, thats it for now? Do you have any other tips you would like to share? Drop em in the comment area.
Last week i hosted a photography workshop for my club (Monash Photography Club). It was intended for the beginner as around 60% of our club member regard themselves as beginner in photography. The workshop was attended by around 50 students, which exceeds all our expectation. We even run out of pizza!
I received lots of positive comment from the beginner members. They said that the presentation was easy to understand yet very informative. If you are wondering whats the teaching that day, lets get started!
These are the main points of my presentation.
Introduction to Photography
Exposure
Composition
Assignments
Introduction To Photography
Photography is a system of “Human”, “Lenses” and “Sensor/Film”
They works on principal of “whole is greater than sum of parts”
All three elements interacting together to produce photograph
You don’t need big long lenses and $10,000 camera to produce good photograph
Exposure and Composition
A photograph is always a combination of exposure and composition.
Exposure dictates the amount of light (basically a combination of shutter, aperture, and ISO sensitivity)
Composition dictates how the elements in the photograph interact with each others (includes light, framing, depth of field, patterns, contrast etc.)
Shutter Speed
Its the duration of letting the sensor exposed to light
The longer = The brighter
The shorter = The darker
Long = prone to blurring – why tripod
Short = freeze motions – big aperture
In order to capture a fast moving subjust like this, fast shutter speed is needed.
To capture a night scene like this, slow shutter is best. Notice that it also captures the cloud movements which is not possible to be captured with fast shutter.
If you don't happen to bring a tripod for that one shot, try to use half a second shutter speed. Which is slow enough to capture night scene, but also very prone to blur-ness unless you have steady hands.
Aperture
How wide does the lens opens to let lights in
Wider = more light, less depth of field
Shallower = less light, more depth of field
Example of wide aperture shot to capture the bokeh (the term for blur background with sharp object).
ISO Sensitivity
The sensitivity of the film/camera sensor
Higher ISO = more sensitive to light, need less shutter speed, more grain
Lower ISO = less sensitive to light, need more shutter speed, less grain
Grains appear more on dark/shadowy area than highlighted area.
Basic Composition
Rule of third – I’ll write more in-depth article next time
Basically, rule of third means placing the object off centre. For best result, place it in intersection of thirds.
Framing – It could evokes sense of intimacy and secrecy
Anything can be frame for your object. Trees, peoples, gates, clouds, mountains, etc. Use your imagination.
Spaces – Instead of fully filling the frame with your object, putting them on the side while giving a space to breath could produce captivating results
Experiment with spaces, sometimes you will find it really interesting
Colour/Contrast – Makes the object stand out from the background.
The shadowy running watter provides striking contrast with the baby's skin color and tone
Perspective – Be unique!
Instead of taking shots with the normal angles, try to go low or high to create a bizzare and unique shots.
Pattern – Human brain is somewhat hardwired to find pattern in daily life, thus creating pattern can create a sense of familiarity.
Find the pattern!
Lines – Use of leading lines to direct the viewer’s eyes to the place where you want them to see.
Notice that even though the square is place on the border of the frame, your eyes is still directed to it because of the lines. Exploit the line!
Depth of field – Blur and sharp!
Depth of field is very limited in this photo as i only use f2 aperture (which is very wide). Thus throwing the other chess piece off focus, directing your eyes to the ones in focus.
Sense of movement
Photographs are still objects, but we can still invoke illusion of movement by using slow shutter speed to capture moving objects. Make sure your hands are steady or be ready to expect blurs.
Assignments
After learning all the basics, get your camera and try to capture your everyday objects while utilizing your new gained knowledge. You may show them to your friends to see what they think of it, or you might even show it to me! I’ll make sure i critics the hell out of your image, haha.
The essence of photography is learning the rules and learn how to break them.
Let your imagination run wild, experiment with the extremes, try that shot you always wanted. You will be surprised how cool the experiment will look like.
Anyway, i’ll show you some image taken by the workshop students. Most of them took me by surprise :p
I do not took these pictures, and their copyright belong to their respective creator.
First experiment with the rules of third. I'd say its not bad eh!
Leading line experiment, though i'd say placing the arrow on the left side of the image would work much better.
I'm not sure what he tries to capture, but the pattern on the floor and building plus constrasty sky make this a really good photo
Rules of third and frame experiment. worked nicely.
Depth of field experiement
Leading lines and perspective.
A really good change of perspective, and also rule of thirds
I really like this picture. Mainly because of the contrast between chair and the bricks, the person is also placed off centre to give more power to the photo.
A very good experiment with panning.
Zooming like this can be achieved by using a rather slow shutter speed and zoom the lens while pressing shutter button.
I hope you enjoy this lesson, and be sure to drop me a comment or two.
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). You set your camera to aperture priority and tried to take some shots, but because of the low light (heck, the sky is pitch black) your camera set the shutter to 2 seconds to compensate. You got the shot, but its totally blurry. You then change to setting to shutter priority to 1/50 second to avoid camera shake. But all you are getting is pitch black images. You wonder what you should do now?
