How to Take Night Photos with Excellent Effects
Last Updated on December 22, 2022 by Peter Wood
Taking night photos is a kind of photograph skill. All photographers understand that light is their best partner. So, even some professional photographers are scared to take night photos. Can you imagine that you have to pack up and go home after setting up the tripod and preparing to take the sunset? To some people, taking photos in dark light is suffering. But to other photographers, that is the time to produce magic and fantasy. If you grasp the tips about taking night photos, you can enjoy shooting in dark light. Therefore, this article will tell you how to take night photos.
Part 1. Necessary Tools and Equipment
If you want to take a perfect night photo, you have to prepare some necessary tools and equipment besides a camera.
Tripod
A shaky camera cannot take a great night photo. Especially during long exposures, a tripod is much better than your hands. So a tripod is a necessary tool when taking night photos. On the other hand, the tripod could help you to get an accurate angle and keep the camera stable at the same time. If you prefer to take night scene photos, a carbon fiber tripod is a good choice since it is lighter.
Wide lens
A wide lens could produce incredible sharpness, for they are more tolerant in focus in the darkness. Wide lenses, such as F16, F18, and F22, are excellent for taking landscape or architectural photos. If you want to shoot a night photo, they are your weapons.
Flashlight & external flash
Darkness means it is short of natural light when you take night photos. Then a trustful flashlight is necessary. There are many flashlight productions. You can select one according to the cost and effect. A good flashlight is not only a supplement of natural light but also a helpful tool to set focus. Besides flashlight, an external flash is another way to supplement natural light shortage. You can shoot an external flash multiple times in different directions during exposure. That will illuminate dark areas manually.
Part 2. Camera Settings to Take Perfect Night Photos
A good camera is also a necessary tool to take night photos. However, camera settings will affect the output as well.
Manual mode
You can control the aperture and shutter speed to nail exposure while taking night photos. So, all night photos should take in manual exposure mode. During sunset, the light changes fast. Almost every shutter needs you to adjust the camera’s parameters. And some features of cameras are unavailable in darkness, like meter readings. So although every adjustment is tiny, manual mode is the best choice when taking night photos.
On the other hand, the autofocus mode is available at night; but we recommend adjusting to manual focus mode. When you set your tripod and have a clear focus, the manual focus mode of the lens could keep the focus stable when your shoot continuously, although you have to adjust the focus every time you change the position.
Aperture and shutter speed
Considering the meter readings of your camera are invalid in darkness, you have to set the exposure manually. However, calculating exposure for the dark scene is not a mathematics question. It needs to accumulate experience and practice. There are some tips to get exposure when taking night photos for beginners. When the light is weakening, you should keep your ISO in the stage, close your aperture down, and shoot a much slower exposure. We all know that the longer the exposure, the more the noise in the photo. Keeping ISO at a level and aperture close could reduce noise and sharpen focus. And longer exposure is necessary to take night photos because that will capture more light in photos. Exposure is usually as long as 10 to 30 seconds when taking night photos. That is much longer than usual. After preparations, you can start taking night photos in practice.
Part 3. The Easy Post-Processing Method for Night Photos
Why it is difficult to take night photos? Besides image noises bring by the high ISO with the camera will capture image noises, there are other problems, such as the lowlight environment, the light sources, and more. If you have already shot some photos, WidsMob AI Retoucher is the easy and professional post-processing method to enhance these night photos with advanced AI algorithms. It not only reduces image noises, recovers low light, and removes haze, but also tweaks lights, adjusts vignettes, and more to make a stunning night photo.
1. Remove image noise and recover low light for night photos with advanced AI algorithms.
2. Enhance photos via saturation, contrast, brightness, vignette, sharpness, vibrance, and more.
3. Apply soft light, Lomo, vivid, dark light, super nature, and other filters and effects easily.
4. Polish portraits with skin softening, shine removal, eye circle removal, and blemish removal.
Step 1. Once you have installed WidsMob AI Retoucher on your computer, launch the program and click the Import button to upload the night photos you have taken. It enables you to upload RAW files, JPEG, JPG, PNG, and more. After that, you can choose the night photo and click the Edit button in the upper-right corner.
Step 2. Go to the AI Retouch menu to choose the different AI algorithms for night photos, you can choose the Noise Reduction button to reduce the image noises of the high ISO and select the Lowlight Recovery button to restore the low-light image. It enables you to enhance the photos automatically from image noise and lowlight in one click.
Step 3. When you need to further edit the photos, you can simply click the Adjust menu and choose the different settings to get the optimal effect, including exposure, contrast, temperature, sharpness, highlights, and more. It also enables you to tweak the color tones and reduce the noise manually to get the optimal photo effect.
Step 4. If you need to further edit the night photos, you can also choose the Filters menu, it enables you to adjust the lights, such as Lomo, vivid, soft light, dark light, and more to tweak the lights of the night photos. There are a series of B/W films you can apply before clicking the Save As button to enhance and save your night photos.
Conclusion
This article has introduced the ultimate guide on how to take night photos. There are necessary tools and equipment to take a good night's photo. Tripod keeps your camera steady during a long exposure. A wide lens takes a sharper image in darkness. Flashlights and external flash offer light in the dark. You need to have a good camera and appropriate settings such as manual exposure and lens focus mode. If you need to enhance the photos with the post-processing software, WidsMob AI Retoucher is the best choice you should take into consideration.