Any tips from you pros for night shooting? (640x480 pic linked)

[The Rock]

I'm a total camera noob, and I need some tips on night shooting. Camera is a Canon Powershot S30 (3.2mp). I had a buddy of mine fiddle with my camera settings, but I have no clue what he did or how he did it. Is there a site somewhere that has tutorials on basic night shooting with a digicam? This was the result of his fiddling:



He tried to explain what he did, but he isn't the greatest teacher and I'm not the best student.

[Wulfman]

disable flash, mount on tripod/place on ground increase aperture time.

[edit] force the camera to use low iso-level (100, 200) to prevent "noise".

mfg
wulfman

[MultimediaMan]

I had a chance to field test a Litton M85 on a Suppressed Ruger 10/22 a couple of years ago: Worked great on Rabbits.

[Jon P. Inghram]

He shoulda opened the aperture a bit though, having the ground 2 inches from the lens and the background in focus looks a tad odd.

Oh, and if possible use the proper white balance for the available lighting. If your camera can do custom color balance, bring a heavy sheet of white paper so that it can figure out the proper white balance. I loved using a friends Canon EOS D60, expensive digicams are a blast.

[The Rock]

Jon: thats my fault. I couldnt hold the camera steady, so I set it on the curb.

[Jon P. Inghram]

The angle from the curb looks cool, just needs a little less depth of field.

[The Rock]

Neato. I have a ton of learning to do. I need some tutorials or something, or I need to buy a book.

[Wulfman]

less DOF can be difficult to achieve with compact digicams.

mfg
wulfman

[az]

Dansdata says "shooting digital" is a good book. I don't know if you really need a book, though. There are a few good photo/digicam forums out there which might be of more help.

A few basics:

• The Aperture: Open Aperture (LOWER F-Number!) will let more light through, thus resulting in shorter exposure times, and also decreases the depth of field, so your background and foreground are out of focus. This is GOOD if you want to shoot people or objects (and especially important for Macros), since they then stand out from the background. Shooting at telephoto also decreases DOF.
  
  Aperture Priority (A) Mode (if your cam supports it) lets you choose the Aperture, and your camera selects the best Exposure Time.
  
• Exposure Time: As a rule of thumb, when shooting without tripod, the exposure time should always be at most 1/focal length (35mm eq.) seconds - so if you're shooting at 100mm tele, your exposure time should not exceed 1/100 sec, to prevent camera shake. For low-light shots, macros, long exposures you definitely need a tripod, or rest the camera on a surface (or, if this is all not possible, lean yourself/the cam against a wall or street light, hold the cam to your eyes with both hands, hold your breath, and shoot a series).
  
  Shutter Priority (S) Mode lets you select Exposure Time, while the cam chooses a matching Aperture to get a correctly exposed picture.
  
• ISO Sensitivity: Lower ISO always produces less noise, higher ISO allows you to use shorter exposure times and/or smaller Apertures (HIGHER F-number!). Noise is generally overrated. Yes, it might be highly distracting when viewed on your monitor at 100%, but is FAR less visible on a printed image, or if you reduce picture size for comfortable monitor viewing.
  
• White Balance: Our eyes and brain have built-in auto white balance - we always see correct colors because we have a context from which to judge the color of the light. When we look at a picture, though, this context isn't there, so we see the colors wrong. A camera thus has to correct for color temperature, to make the image look right to us even without context. Auto White Balance may not produce good results for night shots. Also, you might want a color cast that's different from the original one to convey a certain feeling. (For your picture, for instance, warm colors might not be what you want, because you want your car to look mean, not comfortable and slow - you'll notice Jon has changed color balance from your original image).
  
  Your camera lets you select different White Balance presets, one of which might work for you at night even though its name might suggest otherwise. Maybe it even offers Manual White Balance, for which you have to shoot a white sheet of paper (as Jon explained above). The cam then makes sure this tone will be white in the final image.
  
• General Night Shooting tips:
  
  As was said above, use a tripod! (or at least one of the tricks I mentioned). Self-timer helps, too, when shooting landscapes at night, because it avoids the vibration of when you press the shutter release.
  
  Use Manual (M) Mode, choose the widest aperture (lowest number) available first, then select the matching exposure time to get the correct exposure. Use Exposure Bracketing if available (The camera then takes three slightly differently exposed pictures, so you can sort them out later when at home - it's often not easy to judge the exposure correctly on the tiny LCD).
  
  Use the White Balance setting that seems the most fitting to you, if Auto produces suboptimal results, or use Custom White Balance (don't forget to bring your white sheet of paper!). Or shoot RAW, if the camera supports it, and set the white balance at home, on your computer.

I'm sure I forgot something, but that's it for the moment

Oh, and it's really not that hard - you have a digital camera, which means you can play around and try out however much you want, so JUST DO IT

AZ

P.S.: Knowing all this doesn't make you a good photographer. I for one haven't produced even one picture I deem good enough for showing anybody but myself

[az]

Oh, BTW, I like the perspective from below - next time you should find more even ground, though. Also, play with Telephoto from far away and wide angle from nearer - that can make a helluva difference.

AZ

[The Rock]

Excellent! Thanks Az!

[VJ]

I think Az basically covered it all...
It is interesting to know that under exposure can be relatively well corrected in post processing (of course, serverly underexposed pictures will result in a lesser dynamic range). Overexposure (regions that are bright white) is far more difficult to correct (and will always show a loss of detail).

What you can try is take a picture of e.g. a monument in the evening, with an extremely long shutter time. I have some shots like that of Venice (30s exposure of San Marco). As people that are present are virtually always moving, the resulting picture appears to have no people on it...

Long exposures with digital cameras can lead to a special kind of noise: hot pixels

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/Glossary/Digital_Imaging/Noise_Reduction_01.htm

These are pixels that are bright red/green or blue and are randomly spread over the photo. On the above link, there is a way of eliminating most of this noise. A lot of cameras however have built in noise reduction functions (that work in a similar way). If you do intend to take longer exposure shots, and the camera has such a function, it might be worth turning it on...




For photographing moving objects, the flash is usefull; even in combination with a long exposure time. This only works on relatively short range (not on the kind of picture you posted). The flash can be used to stop motion (i.e. to freeze a moving object on a given location).
Unlike what some people think, a flash can be combined with longer shutter times to yield nice effects. Examples are a person standing in front of a attraction (in a theme park or so) when it is dark: the lights on the attraction will be displayed as lines, and the person will be properly illuminated by the flash.

If the camera supports it, you have a choise between front curtain and rear curtain flash. The difference is the time when the flash is fired. I'll try to explain on a graph...
1= time when shutter opens
2= time when shutter stops
F= flash firing
....1.............2...
....F.................. -> front curtain
...................F... -> rear curtain

The difference in the shot is where the "lightstripes" of moving objectes appear. Suppose that a car with its lights on drives by. The car will be "caputured" when the flash fires, however, the lights will be captured during the entire motion of the car.

As a result, in front curtain, the car is captured at time 1 (on the previous timeline), but the lights of the car are captured later, resulting in the light-stripes appearing in front of the car. In rear curtain, the lights are captured before the car is captured (this latter happens at time 2); resulting in the lights being positioned behind the car.

You can try this on stationary objects when panning the camera (i.e. moving it while the shutter is open). This can be used to photograph a car in motion with the entire background blurred (in the direction the car is moving). Try this with the different flash settings at home (with a light that is not too bright, as to have long enough shuttertimes). I have of my vcr : the leds on the device seemed just right, and you can see the lightstripes in relation to the position of the VCR on the picture.


Jörg