Wondering why all those night pictures always turn out too dark, blurry, and ugly? Unfortunately, many compact cameras don't have the power of a full professional dSLR, so we've thought up 5 simple steps to improve your nightlife captures.
How To: Take Great Nighttime Photos
- Use your nighttime setting: Almost all cameras today have a nighttime option on their cameras, so take advantage of it. It sets everything for you so you don't have to sit there fiddling with buttons.
- Switch to manual to increase exposure: If you're an anti-preset person, feel free to up exposure manually. More light coming in means more details at night.
- Maximize stabilization: Shakes are your enemy at night. Use a mini-portable tripod or a flat surface and utilize the self-timer to get yourself in the shot.
- Mess with aperture: Keep it low and slowly adjust upward until you get the right amount of desired light coming into the camera. These settings are usually denoted with an "F" in front of it.
- Up the ISO: Increasing the ISO may help increase your details, but too much can add tons of grain to your picture. So tread lightly; we suggest using around ISO 400 for optimal results.
Photo courtesy of cquintana.
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hey, ya can't forget shutter speed, yo!
view kdkaboom's profile
most compacts nowadays give you so little control over the shutter speed it's stupid. Most lack a manual mode to, which is just sad.
i have a nikon coolpix 4300 (a compact at that time) from 5 years ago. It had any setting you wanted for shutter in it's manual mode, from 1/1000 (or maybe higher) to a 1 minute bulb.
The next nikon, compact, a few years later, no more manual option and very little control over the settings.
Just got a sony dsc w80 around christmas time. compact. no manual mode and the nightime mode kind of sucks. yeah i can turn it on iso1000, but why would i want the pictures to look like crap. But i didn't buy it for nighttime shots, it was $140 and i needed something small to carry around all the time. It would be nice for it to actually have control of the shutter, i mean how hard is that really.
Hopefully over time we see the compacts regain control of some manual settings, although i highly doubt it, since it seems most people want dumbed down cameras. Otherwise they'd have no idea how to use them since reading the manual is often out of the question...
view jmorey's profile