OUTDOORS AT NIGHT

The aim of the exercise  is to explore the variety of lighting effects and color in artificial light. Artificial light is used much less often by photographers than daylight and there are two distinct types. The first is available light used to illuminate buildings, streets and interiors that is not specially designed for photography. The second is photographic lighting which is the equipment that can be bought to create a lighting effect e.g flash light.(OCA Manual, Art of Photography, page 128.)

In doing this exercise, i seized an opportunity when i travelled to another town and stayed at the third floor of the hotel room to take some photographs of the view below at night. I set my camera on a tripod with a low ISO of 100 and my aperture wide open at f1.4 and took these shots.

Image 1: ISO 100,50MM,0EV,F/1.4, 1/2.5

The low shutter speed has made vehicle headlights and tailights to becomes light streams. I used a 50mm lens for this  but it may have been better accentuated with a zoom lens.

As i was doing this exercise, a nearby house erupted in fire and the bright glow lit up the horizon. While the fire service was been awaited after everone was evacuated , i took this shot below handheld at ISO 6400 which gave me a shutter speed of 1/125s using a 300mm lens.

Image 3:ISO 6400,300mm,0EV,f/9,1/125

Challenges of low-light photography include the use of a tripod and the time of day one would take pictures. But I quite like night time pictures and believe that with a little sacrifice it could be a rewarding past-time.  You have to understand how to expose properly for a subject at night. With apertures above 2.8 , you tend to get low shutter speeds which can be sensitive to the slightest camera shake , hence the need for a tripod. But if you raise the ISO setting on your camera, you may be able to get good shutter speeds to shoot handheld without having camera shake effect on the camera..However with raised ISO comes the problem of noise on the images. Some of the latest models DSLR's can produce sharp images at very high ISO,s eliminating the need to shoot with a tripod. But they can be quite expensive e.g the Nikon D4 which retails for $6000. But lower range cameras like the Nikon d7000 also do well at ISO's not exceeding 6400.

I got a hint of how to take good meter readings from Bryan Petersons Understanding exposures where he says that one raise his camera to the sky, get a balanced exposure, recompose and then press the shutter.This holds whether you are shooting in backlight, sidelight, front light, sunrise or sunset. If you need an ideal depth of field, set the aperture to f/16 or f/22.

Image 4:ISO 160,50MM,F/2,1/13

For the Image 4 above, I went to the local park for photo opportunities at night and came across the roasted meat seller. I composed to took a picture without any flash using my 50mm f1.4 lens.

Image 5:ISO 1600MM,80mm,f/13,1/80, A street Shop in Makka

In Image 5, I was attracted to the brightly lit store in a street in Makka, but i had no tripod and was instructed not to use one in my manual ,and so i increased the camera ISO to 1600 to get a faster shutter speed of 1/80s. The bright colors of the fabrics have given the shop some vibrance. Its dark in the corners and i know i could have done better getting a shot of the shop.