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infernal-moltres — Night Photography Tutorial
Published: 2005-03-25 08:54:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 32529; Favourites: 198; Downloads: 8117
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Description
Night Photography is fun and easy. When performed well, the results are spectacular and awe-inspiring.This tutorial covers some of the basics of photography with specific reference to low-light conditions that require longer exposures. In addition to this, the tutorial also describes the use of Unsharp Mask and Curves in Adobe Photoshop, both of which are useful image-editing tools in night and day photography. Over 40 diagrams and example photographs are included to aid understanding and highlight important points.
Have a read, and YOU can start taking quality night photographs today!
Note: The image you see above is only a preview. Click on the preview picture or "Download" to see the entire tutorial.
A new, third edition is now available here:
[link]
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Comments: 72
Found helpful the thing about the exposure time in relation to the ISO and the f stops. I was wondering jut about that few days ago. Will keep reading
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This is so helpful! I'm just getting into photography now, so I'll try to keep all this in mind next time I go out to take pictures!
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I read this tutorial last week and now when I try and read it again I cannot access it... ahhhhhhhh damn I really wanted to read it over again! Its great! Whats wrong???
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This is probably the most useful and user friendly tutorial I've come across.
Uuber UUBER helpful
I loved it. I'll be back when when I forget (and I know I will) something.
Thanks.
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A very well made and helpful tutorial for those of us new to dSLRS, thank you very much.
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Thanks for your comment and fave. It's great that this tutorial was useful to you. Thank you for reading!
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Nice work on this tutorial. I agree with pretty much everything stated here. However, flash can be used creatively at night - you just have to walk around with an external unit and flash the objects you want illuminated.
Good job though.
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Thank you. Glad that you agreed with most of the things in this tutorial...at least it shows I'm roughly on the right track!
Flash is something I haven't really explored myself in night photography. Although I've read about flash techniques at night, and using it creatively in slow sync speeds for rear curtain sync and the like, it's not something I can honestly write about yet.
Perhaps soon...for now, I'm only using a built-in flash, while concentrating funds towards getting a long lens for zoo photography and also a decent tripod for more night photography and landscape shots.
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I just can't thank you enough!
You just helped a noob today!
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Thank you too, and you're most welcome. By giving feedback on this tutorial, you have helped me too, because that way I know it is still relevant and informative enough. Great to see that it was useful to you, however judging by your gallery of fireworks photos, you probably already know a lot about night photography.
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Nah...I just started my photographic 'career'...*shy.
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Heheh...well, we all start somewhere. I've been doing this for almost 4 years now and it's still er...*ahem*
Creativity will need to be learned over time, just as stew needs to simmer for a while before it's perfect.
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Yes...I have much to learn.
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Heheh...as do all of us. Cheers to learning!
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very well-put-together tutorial. it was/is very helpful, clear and concise. I now feel like I need a digital camera instead of film, just for the sake of convenience.
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Thanks for your comment. Glad you found the tutorial somewhat useful, even though it was largely geared towards digital photography.
In recent times I've tried using film for night photography as well, and the results are very favorable. For exposures longer than 1/10s or so, most films run into a phenomenon called reciprocity failure where the film becomes less sensitive to light the longer it is exposed. Hence, to correctly expose long exposure shots on film, I've found that it works to compensate by +1 stop.
That is to say, for an 8 second exposure, I'd expose at 16 seconds as well. I've tried exposing Fuji Superia 400 (common stock film) for as long as 128 seconds with no issues. Perhaps there was a bit of a color cast, but I'm not experienced enough to say for sure. Besides this point, using film for night photography should be very similar to digital.
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oh, you are so helpful! thank you thank you thank you
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That's okay. Glad to help.
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Thank you. 
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thank you too. it's been a while since the last time a take photographs. need a refresher course though and your article helps a lot
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Thank you very much for the fave on this tutorial and another recent photo.
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hey thanks a lot for repling, actually i have some questions....
if you don't mind can i get your msn or should i send you a note?
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Yes, please do drop me a note here at DA. In the past I used to be a regular user of MSN and even ICQ, but I have not logged onto the latter for years now. And I hardly ever use MSN messenger too.
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yo bro. i saw your url from clubsnap! great job man! i give you 10 stars
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Hey! 
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Thanks for commenting.
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Now I finally got around to reading your Night Photography Tutorial :] Most of the technical details I've already picked up here and there, but it's good to read it all together in concise form. Now I only need to find out how to adjust the aperture of my camera ;]
The section on creating meaningful fotographs with the rule of thirds and stuff comes in really handy for me. The photoshopping sounds really neat, too - too bad I only have the GIMP :[ I'm afraid I can't adjust any curves there... let's see what the GIMP can do about sharpness. One last thing: Why is it called UNsharp mask - actually it sharpens the images, if I haven't misunderstood the tutorial?
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Thanks for reading it through, and I'm happy that some bits came in handy for you. It's a pity that you don't have Photoshop, but not all is lost. I'm not sure about the Unsharp Mask in GIMP, but there is a Curves function in that program. Here is a tutorial that will explain the curves function in greater detail, and towards the end are instructions on how to access Curves in GIMP:
[link]
Intially, "Unsharp Mask" sounded like an irony to me, but I soon understood what it meant. The function is meant to mask (or hide) any unsharpness (blurness) in an image, hence its name. The end result is a sharpening of details in the image.
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Thanks for pointing out that tutorial to me :] I also found the Unsharp mask in the GIMP, here's the result of my first attempt of using it.
BTW If anyone is looking for the unsharp mask in the GIMP, it can be found by rightclicking on the image and choosing Filter ---> Improve.
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Thanks for letting me know of that. I've never had any experience with other image-editing programs before, so I'll bear that in mind if anybody asks again in the future.
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Gee, I must have forgotten to fav this tutorial back then... I just went crazy searching for this deviation in my faves' gallery because I couldn't find it there ;]
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Heheh...well, it's great you manged to locate it again, and I thank you for taking the time to refer back to this tutorial. For a moment I found your nick very familiar.
It's about time I update this thing, but because it's done entirely in PS, it makes for very hard work, shifting the paragraphs and pictures around. Worse, the file size has increased since the first edition and the computer slows dramatically while trying to make changes to it.
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Yea, I had your Nighttime Grandeur faved and so I found it. I just recommended your tutorial to someone else. I think this has been the single most helpful tutorial to me, with halley's Digital Black and White coming as a close second.
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Thanks for pointing me to the B&W tutorial. I've given it a whirl on one of my photos and it seems to work. However I've yet to compare it how I used to make digital B&Ws. Currently I simply go to 'Image', 'Adjustments' and then 'Gradient Map', and then go to Levels or Curves after that to improve contrast.
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Wow, that was great. I even understood the aperture/ISO/shutter speed relations that my piss-poor teacher tried to explain, and that'll help even in daytime photography (blurry pictures is a major problem for me, now I can more or less understand how to adjust the three accordingly). I'll be sure to share this information with another classmate of mine (under aforementioned "piss-poor teacher") who is quite interested in photography himself!
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No problem on the fav! And I think my teacher doesn't know enough, really. He's a general media teacher, but he seems to know little to nothing on all the things he teaches us. It's quite frustrating, really.
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Hmm...that occasionally happens too. There are supervisors or teachers wandering that do nothing other than give harsh critisism but no advice on how to improve. And when asked questions, they shove it off immediately by saying, "Why do you ask so many questions?"
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Thank you too, for dropping by and for reading. It's great you found it useful.
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What an excellent tutorial! Very useful, very educational for beginners and I personally will benefit from the Curves in Photoshop section. It was great to be able to open up a single page and read it at my own pace, instead of having to watch a video, and not have to scroll around in a page that was the wrong size at Full View. Simple, clear and effective.
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Thank you. It's excellent that the tutorial was useful to you and easy to read in terms of content and format. The original piece was very large but I was forced to cut the size down because DA won't accept any pieces greater than 10 megapixels. Some of the words have become small as a result, but I hope that they are at least readable.
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Oh yes, it's all very legible
Hope things are going well for you in the military
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The army is going well at this time. Initially I was apprehensive about the whole thing and feared that I wouldn't be able to handle it. But I realized that I just need to stop thinking and do the task at hand. And with that mindset, things usually do get done. The physical training is demanding, but so far, nothing has been too tough for me to take.
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Well, that's very good to know. And you'll be in great shape when you're done with it
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That's pretty good! Even someone who doesn't know anything about photography can use it.
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