4×6: Night Scene Tips
Mark Hamilton from 4×6 posts some useful tips about night photography:
For your camera settings, it’s quite the opposite of common sense. With a dark scene, you tend to think of fast film speed or ASA/ISO setting for digital- but you want to use the lowest film speed that your camera will handle (if your camera has the ASA/ISO set to “automatic” be sure to change this).
Comments
It’s definitely true that you’ll notice the noise of higher ISOs more with night shots. But I think sometimes it’s inevitable to push higher, even at night. For example, if you’re forced to shoot handheld at night, or if you’re looking for a very specific shutter speed.
For example, I took this shot at night on the Brooklyn Bridge, and wanted the ambient lighting to be strong, but also wanted only a tiny motion blur on the pedestrians: http://abhi.abhiandyuri.com/photoblog/index.php?id=5
So I ended up having to go 2 stops higher than my lowest ISO setting.