Photography News Issue 50

Photography News | Issue 50 | photographynews.co.uk

Technique

Create a night portrait

Capture the night sky

Shooting at night often means using long exposures, and this isn’t normally a good fit with portraits as the slow shutter speed blurs the subject. But add flash and it’s a whole different ball game. Even if you’re shooting with a shutter speed of many seconds, the burst of flash will freeze the subject; but the slow shutter speed will also showmotion blur in the rest of the scene. Normally when using flash the camera will default to a shutter speed like 1/60sec, so while the

flash modes and set it to slow sync. Within these settings you should also be able to set the flash to fire as the shutter opens or closes (first/ front or second/rear curtain). Now you can set your exposure and shoot as normal. If you need more or less power in the flash, use the flash exposure compensation setting to add or remove light. In the below example pic (22secs at f/4.5, ISO 200), a red laser pen was also used from behind to add some light trails.

subject will be sharp and well lit there won’t be enough power in the flash to light the rest of the night- time scene. To stop that, find your

Above In complete darkness with the camera shutter held open on B, the model has lit with flash first before a novelty red laser pen was waved around from behind her for about 10secs and then the shutter was closed.

Many landscape photographers pack up their tripod when the last of the sunlight has left for the day. But there are other suns you can shoot when ours has departed. Wide-field astrophotography and nightscapes can reveal the sparkling heavens, in all their glory, but to get the best possible results you need to be shooting with the right settings and at the right time. First off you need as clear a night as possible, and to bewell away from populated areas where, without light pollution, the stars will be more easily visible to you and your camera. For the same reason, try to shoot on a moonless night, and using an app like PhotoPills, check the time that astronomical twilight ends. After this time, the sky will be at its darkest. Setting up on a tripod, compose with some foreground interest, and then switch to manual exposure and focus. Next, use the 500 rule to work out how many seconds you can shoot for without showing too much movement in the stars; just divide 500 by the focal length you’re shooting at, so 24mm divided by 500 would give you around 20secs.

Paint with light

Adding your own light to a scene can work wonders, and after dark is the perfect time to do it. Light painting works by setting a long exposure on your camera, andwhile the shutter is open applying light to the subject. There’s a myriad of lighting tools you can use to do this, from off-the-shelf flashes and LED lights, to regular household torches and DIY lighting rigs made of many bulbs. The first thing you need is a good subject, something with some interesting details to light, but also one that you’re able to move around fairly quickly, and light from different angles. At the scene, first try some test shots, shooting in aperture-priority mode with a high ISO setting, just to get your composition right without needing to shoot any longexposures. When you’re happy, lock off the camera’s position on a tripod. Still in aperture-priority, set a middling aperture of around f/5.6 or f/8 as a starting point, then set the ISO to a low level to give a shutter speed long enough to light paint. With big or distant subjects you will need several minutes.

Dial that shutter speed or faster, then set a wide aperture and a high ISO; settings of around f/2.8 and ISO 1600 are common. Take a test shot and look at the histogram on screen, checking for highlight or shadow clipping. If it’s too light decrease the aperture, shutter speed or ISO; if it’s too dark, increase the aperture size, or up the ISO. Finally focus. This is best done in manual focus mode, using the live view screen as a guide, and zooming in to the preview to make sure the stars are sharp. Now get shooting. Above Fast aperture wide-angles are popular lenses for keen astro shooters because they allow the use of slower ISO speeds for higher image quality with minimal noise.

Above Light painting is fun and produces great results, but you do have to experiment.

It’s a technique that rewards experimentation, so vary the time that you leave the torch on the subject or how many times you fire the flash, to see how it affects the subject’s exposure

Wantmore low-light thrills? Checkout this month’s CameraClass for an in-depth look at shooting light trails.