Low Light Photography Tips: Shooting Landscape

A watchtower across a river at night.

Low light photography is when you are shooting in a low light situation, such as the night. If you want to portray the location as it is, then a flash or additional lighting will not be needed. Some of the popular activities for this is photographing the city at night, monuments lit by the floodlights, and others. Shooting landscape at night will result in not having enough light that provides adequate shutter speed for hand holding your camera. You can use high ISO speed to overcome this, but at the risk of having unwanted noise in your images.

The guide here can be used for all kind of cameras, from compact to dslr. The only difference will be the camera model's limitation. A compact might have limited exposure speed up to 15 second or less. A bridge camera might have better option to overcome the problem. A dslr camera will be the best.
 

Accessories needed:

• Tripod: to ensure your photo's sharpness as the speed will be really low. 
• A cable release or a remote: to prevent shake resulting from your hand touching the camera.

Let us review the Exif data of the photo above:

• ISO: 200 was chosen. This is to increase the shutter speed. The number is still low enough to avoid noise.
• Aperture: f22, to ensure sharpness across the depth of field of the image. 
• Shutter Speed: 30 seconds.

   

At your chosen location, set your camera on the tripod and compose your shot.

1. Set the ISO to the lowest. Some camera will have 50 as its lowest. This is to ensure noise free images. Increase the ISO if the shutter speed is too long, such as more than 30 seconds. The best is to bracket using the ISO as a safeguard against noise.
2. Set the exposure mode to Aperture priority (AV) or P for compacts. Do not use the auto setting. The camera's algorithm will choose the highest ISO and smallest f number instead.
3. Set the camera's aperture number at it's biggest, such as f22. A compact or bridge might have from f8 to f16.
4. Just shoot. Best to bracket the exposures.      

A fountain at a city at night..f22, ISO 400, 20 seconds.

Using The New IPad Retina For Photography: Black & White Images Via TtV Basic

Great app and tablet to have while caught in a traffic jam...

Natural light source from left, a bit to the back..

I had never believed that a computer tablet is capable of photography. This is due to the size of the lens. Also that I am probably jaded after about 20 years plus of taking photos with the old school "bigger is better" mentality. That motto still rings true for the high end publishing industries though, but for the home variety, the technological advancements had simplified the photography process. Simply press the button, and the computer algorithms will take care of the rest. The IPad had shown me that technology is capable of taking the guesswork in finding the correct exposure for photography.

Natural light source from the left.

I had to invest in the New IPad Retina for proofing my upcoming e-books. Anyway, since there is a built in camera in the tablet, I just had to test it out. The normal mode was adequate for taking pictures of my family. As I was surfing the app store, I saw this free  photography application, "TtV Basic". Stated on it's homepage is that the app is for producing vintage style photos. So, I was hooked ...

Upon starting, the app has a beautiful  layout. It is a replicate of the old viewfinder from the twin lens reflex system such as Rollei and others. The layout is simple and intuitive, you can understand and get around fast enough.

TtV Basic is capable of producing three mode of images; Normal, Sepia and Black & White. There are 5 filters that replicates dirts, lines and scratches to authenticate the vintage effect. I just use the first on the list as it suits my preference personally. 

The Normal and Sepia mode were personally too strong for my taste, but the Black & White grabbed my attention right away. After a few shots, I've discovered that the images are beautifully processed. Contrast is excellent. There is a  nice amount of graininess and a black frame that further enhances the photos. Exposure reading is also correct from the uneven lighting that I've put it through. One reminder though, you will still need to apply the photographic lighting techniques for the images to work. No escaping that.

The images using the app are only in a square mode with a size of 1028 x 1028 pixels. They are stored within the app, but you can send them to the Photo album with a press of a button. The photos above are downloaded and resized for this blog without any processing.