![\"David](\"\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/images\/by-david.JPG\")
I\u2019m very lucky to have a wide and varied brief here at Walkhighlands, but I try to thread my ramblings together with reasonable photos. I hope to develop the photographic thread a little more over the coming months, and I thought I\u2019d start with one of my great personal pleasures of camping out \u2013 taking photos at night.<\/p>\n
Taking photos at night is a real performance, in more ways than one. Setting up and operating the camera is more difficult in low light. Tripping over and breaking said machine or indeed the operator is not conducive to good results. Because there\u2019s less light, the amount of shooting time is longer, so keeping warm whilst relatively still can be an issue in the dead of winter.
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![\"Trottenish](\"\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/wwwdavidlintern.com-1050325.jpg\")
<\/a>Trottenish Ridge<\/a>, Skye<\/a> \u2013 ISO80, f2, 15 secs<\/p><\/div> Night photography is nearly always a study of a place, and for me, usually experimental – it takes time, trial and error. Take the shot above, for example. What you can\u2019t see is that this is the 6th attempt \u2013 the others are badly composed, out of focus or too dark. This flags one of the main advantages of digital when taking night photos \u2013 you can check to see what you have, and make corrections on the next shot. All within that limited timeframe of course, before the person in the shot gets tired or bored or the Moon and Venus shift from their pole position above the shelter apex! I told you it was exciting.<\/p>\n North Berwick<\/a> \u2013 ISO50, f8, 224secs<\/p><\/div> Strath Nethy Walkhighlands igloo epic, IS0640, f5, 13secs<\/p><\/div> These long exposure times have another interesting side effect \u2013 the camera \u2018averages\u2019 time and blurs the movement of water and clouds, and with lighting you can create some fairly odd special effects \u2013 hence the trails above. Head torches are also useful for lighting the foreground for a proportion of total exposure time, or putting inside tents for \u2018classic\u2019 mountain shots, a bit like the one below.<\/p>\n Loch Avon, Cairngorms<\/a>, ISO50, f4.5, 30secs<\/p><\/div> Just to confuse matters further, I\u2019ve left out possibly the most important control \u2013 focus. Digital cameras without the ability to manually override auto focus are not the best buy for the budding night photographer. The camera will \u2018hunt\u2019 for focus and usually fail to find it\u2026 it is quite dark out there, after all. Every lens (or camera) I use includes the ability to set focus manually, either in the menu settings or better still on the lens itself. Manual focus rings save me the hassle of looking through a fizzy Electronic viewfinder (EVF), which will usually have auto gain and be grainy as hell in the dark, but I can also temporarily light my main focal object with a head torch to help focus if I\u2019m struggling to get the preview sharp. A few test shots later\u2026 <\/p>\n Coire Mhic Fhearchair<\/a>, Torridon<\/a>, ISO160, f4, 442secs<\/p><\/div> Most of all, taking photos at night is a great excuse to spend high quality time in places that many hill goers never witness at night \u2013 it can be serene, magical, harsh or testing, but without fail it\u2019s a unique experience. Long exposures take time, and after I\u2019ve set the camera up and pressed the shutter, I spend that time silently appreciating how lucky I am to be in these incredible places.<\/p>\n Good things to look for on a camera for night photos:<\/strong> Want to improve your landscape and nature photography? Check out our listings for Scottish landscape, wildlife and nature photography workshops, hides and holidays<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m very lucky to have a wide and varied brief here at Walkhighlands, but I try to thread my ramblings together with reasonable photos. I hope to develop the photographic thread a little more over the coming months, and I thought I\u2019d start with one of my great personal pleasures of camping out \u2013 taking photos at night. Taking photos at night is a real performance, in more ways than one. Setting up and operating the camera is more difficult in low light. Tripping over and breaking said machine or indeed the operator is not conducive to good results. Because…<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,8,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-magazine","category-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11240"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16238,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11240\/revisions\/16238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIt\u2019s also almost like a live performance, reacting and responding to changing conditions, altering settings and camera position to get the desired result. This is true of all photography, but as day shifts to night or vice versa there\u2019s only a small window to get the shot you\u2019re after. It\u2019s exciting! <\/p>\n<\/a>
\nYou can see already that the exposure times are lengthy for night photos. Why was this North Berwick shot so much longer than the Trotternish one? 3 reasons. First, the sensitivity of the Berwick camera \u2013 the ISO \u2013 is set lower because I wanted high quality (the Trotternish one is fairly low too, though, right?) Low ISO generally equals better signal to noise ratio, or less grain. Secondly, the f-number, or aperture is set higher on the second shot. The lens is letting less light in, so the camera needs more time to get the shot. Generally speaking, the higher the f-number, the sharper the photo is from near to far. There\u2019s a third reason, and I\u2019ll return to this at the end.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThis igloo shot was one of over 1000 shots for a time-lapse of the build. I wanted to capture some movement of people in each photo, with a reasonable shot rate (for time-lapse you need a lot of photos!) and the ability of the camera sensor to record anything at all \u2013 so the sensitivity is turned up and the time is reduced to a slightly more manageable 13secs. That\u2019s still way too long to hold the camera manually without blur, plus life is too short and I need to help the others! I\u2019ll need something to stand it on, and something to automate the button press. For the igloo that meant a tripod and a timer, but the Trottenish shot was taken with the camera resting on a cooking pot and the cameras internal timer. Tripods are great but they can be bulky and heavy to carry, and they can also shift around on soft ground or in wind \u2013 for the igloo shot I had the tripod stabilised with a bag hanging underneath to prevent camera blur from occasional gusty spindrift. Rocks or cooking pots move a lot less but positioning the camera above foot height may be tricky! <\/p>\n<\/a>
\nAll this talk of balancing settings betrays the fact you are going to need a camera with manual controls to do most of this. I started out on fully manual film cameras and don\u2019t really understand auto settings, but for those newer to photography \u2018going manual\u2019 can be daunting. Many modern digital cameras have fair auto night modes but I\u2019d say it\u2019s good to get to grips with the \u2018holy trinity\u2019 of sensitivity (aka \u2018ISO\u2019), aperture (aka \u2018f number\u2019) and exposure time (aka \u2018shutter speed\u2019). Just experiment \u2013 getting it wrong is a great teacher. <\/p>\n<\/a>
\nI\u2019m going to finish with a shot I wasn\u2019t entirely happy with. It was my fourth try on a very cold night, and I was very grateful not to be where those other climbers are. You can see that \u2018trail\u2019 effect caused by movement in the picture as the camera \u2018averages\u2019 time over a few minutes.The aperture is as low as this lens will go (the lens is letting in as much light as it can) and the ISO sensitivity is a bit higher than I\u2019d like. Why is the result still dark and flat, despite the exposure lasting over 7 minutes? It\u2019s to do with the \u2018inverse square\u2019 law. Light intensity falls off rapidly at distance \u2013 twice the distance is 1\/4 as bright, 4 times the distance is 1\/16 as bright. We know this intuitively if we return to head torches, as an example \u2013 really bright on the path immediately in front of you, much more diffuse when peering far ahead. Ultimately, I think that\u2019s partly why this photo doesn\u2019t convey the scale and exposure those climbers might have been feeling \u2013 I\u2019m too far away from the light source. Without doing the maths everytime, I can use this knowledge to create more successful night photos. For example, a lit tent, rock or other object in the foreground would add light, and possibly interest to the shot. A clear starry sky would help too… but I don\u2019t use photoshop!<\/p>\n
\nManual focus (on lens, if not then in menu)
\nManual override for all other settings
\nLow ISO \u2013 ability to go low if needed.
\nSelf timer \u2013 look to see how long this is \u2013 if it\u2019s under 1minute, can the camera support an external timer switch?
\nFor SLRs \u2013 ability for mirror lock up (reduces vibration)<\/p>\nRead more ›<\/div>\n