After Sunset

How I do a night shoot

OK I decide to head out for a night shoot, I gather all the equipment together. But I generally keep it all in my truck. I watch the sky anxiously as sunset approaches. I want a clear to lightly cloudy sky. Too many clouds spoils the photo, but I sometimes head out hoping for the best. I have almost always, pre-scouted the place where I will be shooting but sometimes not, especially on the more distant locations.

The descriptions are for a sunset shoot but of course apply to a sunrise shoot as well. The sequence would be reversed, you need to get out on site an hour before sunrise and the beginning shutter speeds will be long and get shorter as the sun gets near the horizon. Being there an hour before sunrise can mean getting  up at 3 or 4 AM.

Having a Canon DSLR and never having used a different brand my terminology is going to be influenced by what I know. If you use a different camera brand you’ll have to dig into your manual for the equivalent instructions. It should be obvious what I am talking about if you are familiar with your camera, and shame on you if you are not.

When I get to the location I set up the camera on my tripod with a remote attached. I mostly use an ultrawide lens, the one I am using now is a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. I used a Sigma 15-30mm before that one. While I am fond of ultrawides there is no reason you can’t use any lens if it is reasonably fast. The perfect location is a site with water between you and the sunset/sunrise. The foreground should be interesting to you. Sometimes I use a grassy plains instead of water. The water works very well since it will pick up colors and reflect them.

For this type of shoot you don’t want much moon in the sky, so either a moonless night or before or after moonrise/moonset at best. A first or last quarter moon is OK since those will not overwhelm the rest of the image. The moon getting close to full will blast so much light into the scene that you won’t be able to capture much of anything else with out some trickery.

I set up a chair and wait for the sun, if the sunset itself is good I’ll shoot some sunset shots while waiting for the sun to slip below the horizon. Once the sun goes under the horizon I get going. If your camera has live view and you can use that for focusing, then you may want to try to use it for critical focusing.

My initial conditions are usually:

• f/5.6 to 6.3
• Aperture Priority mode
• ISO 100 or 200
• shooting in raw
• camera set to long exposure noise reduction

I then start firing off shots and look at the histogram after each of these. I want the histogram off the left edge of the frame and preferably out approaching the center of the frame. This is easier when you are shooting near the sunset but calls for longer and longer exposures later on. If the histogram looks good I’ll just fire off occasional shots every minute or two.

Shutter times will get longer and longer and will eventually reach the 30 second mark. When this happens it is time to change to manual mode(M) and increase the shutter duration to the bulb setting(B). Bulb as I mentioned holds the shutter open as long as the shutter button is activated. Either with a finger (bad idea) or the remote shutter trigger.

I’ll start at 30 seconds and watch the histogram. You will have to guess at increasing shutter speeds, if 30 seconds produces a shot with the histogram peak all the way to the left try 1 minute or 2 minutes. I find that after a certain point the shutter speeds will stabilize often around 5 or 6 minutes. But dark nights will mean longer exposures, I have used up to 15 minute exposures. Watch the battery indicator it will start going down quickly. The small flashlight can be used to check camera settings.

At the 30 second point on Canon DSLR the long exposure noise reduction kicks in. The camera will make the exposure that you set, it will then make another equally long exposure with the shutter shut. It then subtracts the second exposure which recorded shutter noise from the first exposure. This is called dark frame subtraction.

The practical result of this is that exposures have now become twice as long. A five minute exposure is now ten minutes. A 12 minute exposure is now 24 minutes and now you will appreciate the chair rather than sitting on the rock with the snakes. Keep an eye on that battery indicator.

At this point I usually look for interesting foregrounds, trees hanging over the water, docks or whatever you can find. A boat going by can leaving interesting ripples. Move the tripod around to try different spots. You can use the big flash light to try some light painting.

That is basically the process. Like most digital photography it is less than half of what is needed to produce a high quality art photo. The rest of the work will be done in front of your computer running Photoshop or whatever you use. Look at the image at the top of this post. I assure you it did not come out of the camera looking that way. If you believe that a photo is made in the camera then this type of photography is not for you.

Long exposure shots will almost always need serious noise reduction. You will also use curves to adjust the tones and give you a nice dark velvety sky. If you succeed in getting a good histogram with the peak near the center, you will not be happy when you look at the image for the first time. It will need serious post processing to look like a night shot. But the extra data you captured will hold the noise down and produce a much better end result.

I’ll be doing a post on star trails and urban night work in the near future. And one on moonlight photography. And I will do some posts on post processing these images. Keep tuned to this channel.

Update: take a look at this post for more thoughts about long exposure noise: