Night time photography tips/ help?
I've recently been taking my photography interest to the next level as I have purchased a Nikon D60 camera and at Christmas I had a tripod. To be completely honest, I've mostly been using the camera on the Auto mode until I can get my head around the manual settings.
Anyway, I took my camera and tripod out over Christmas and attempted to take some photos of all the distant lights you can see at the top of a hill where I live. . . . now whether the lights were just too far in the distance or whether the streetlights in the street where I was cast a glow, but the image result had quite an orange effect where the sky was black? I'd really like to master night time photography as I think things look so pretty so any tips and advice would be much appreciated.
Cheers!
You have already discovered one of the tricks your brain plays on you, and that is white light is very rarely white, which is one reason you have a white balance on most digital cameras.
All light sources have what's called a colour temperature, to put it simply, a 'white' Tungsten bulb comprises of all the colours of the spectrum but has a higher proportion of red/orange than ordinary daylight, this is why the light in your living room looks white at night when there's no daylight to compare it with but orange during the day when there is, this is probably why your street lights came out orange.
Fluorescent lights are even worse because while they may again look white they have some of the colours of the spectrum missing all together, this is why so many people take clothes etc outside in the daylight to check the colour.
Personally being an old fashioned photographer I would suggest you learn how to use the manual settings, you have more control, more fun and you will learn about real photography as opposed to electronics.
Put your camera on the tripod,set it at an average aperture say between f8 and f11, and then just experiment with the shutter speeds, at least you won't be wasting film like I used to do, experimenting is half the fun of photography, you will find that your shutter speeds will range from a few seconds to several minutes so keep experimenting and making notes of your results.
You may find that you still get 'camera shake' even with a tripod, one way around this is to use the self timer.
Night Photography Part #3 - Learn How to Select ASA / ISO Settings for Night Photography.
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