Camera Lesson #3 - Nightime & Black Light

[Alteka]

I will say straight up that much like regular fleshy human eyeballs, cameras on default settings do not fare well in the dark. In fact, most cameras know it's a lost cause and will probably refuse to take a picture. However, armed with a bit of knowledge on camera settings and lighting, we can take some pretty nifty pictures of not only nightime stuff, but glowy black light awesomeness .

The following information can pertain a bit to regular photography, but for the most part this faq revolves around average joe digital camera (Canon Powershots and whatnot). Also, I am not covering flash use because it does not pertain to the subject.

First up, we're going to talk about Exposure.

Exposure is basically how long your camera shutter sits open to suck up light and take your picture. The longer the exposure, the longer light has a chance to go in. The light is cumulative, so most daytime (ie normal) photos are taken with a *very* short exposure (ie the quick 'snap' sound we all familar with). If the exposure is too long, you'll just end up with a big blob of bleached white. Your camera is pretty smart though, and has no problem with these average daytime shots.

At night though, that short exposure does us no good. A quick photo of a glowy Rayse leaves us with a blurry, spotty lump. Over and over. It can get pretty annoying since your camera has no problem with daytime shots.

The solution to this is to set the exposure up to 2-3 seconds. This will give your camera time to suck up what meager light there is and accumulate it into a proper photo. The setting location for this will vary camera to camera, so play around with it to find the location. Try a bunch of different exposure intervals to find out what works best for you. Sometimes the exposure is listed as a fraction (ie 1/12) instead of in seconds.

Next up: Blurryness

The next immediate thing that you will find in nightime photography is a camera's habit of blurring everything really badly. This is caused by moving the camera while taking a shot.. and it's really easy to do since the exposure is set higher.

So, the easiest solution is to never hold the camera during nightime shots. Either use a tripod, of if that isn't a option you can pile a few solid books and sit the camera ontop of that. Make sure that the camera does not move when you press the snapshot button, and stays still in place until a second after the shutter snaps close.

...hm.. and then there's all those Other Settings....

Once you fiddle with exposure, you will notice there's a bunch of other settings. Some of them can be helpful, but for the most part the only other one that we can use to our advantage is 'ISO'. It's the number indicating a digital camera sensors sensitivity to light. The higher the sensitivity, the less light is needed to make a photo. Digital cameras automatically select the ISO but most have a setting to change it manually (auto ISO generally works best for bright scenes).

Shooting at a lower ISO number requires more light than shooting at a higher number. Lower numbers result in images with the least visible noise (those grainy speckles), which is desirable. The higher the number, the more noise. The amount and degree of noise varies from camera to camera.

So basically, A higher ISO setting makes nightime photography easier. However, the picture will be grainy. I usually leave mine on the default for smoother sharp images.

Now that we know the nightime basics, here a bit of info on Blacklights.

Everyone loves a glowy robot picture, and the most common way to do this is with a blacklight bulb. It emits purple UV light which causes neon and glow-in-dark materials to glow really bright. This can make for some really neat shots.

Black light is very 'directional' on glowing materials. It's easy to set the exposure high to accomodate the overall dark picture, but you can end up with blinding hilighted parts and gaping shadows where the light didn't *quite* reach.

The easiest way to overcome this is to have a secondary light. A dim coloured light in the room or leaving a door open to let a bit of light filter in can really help your camera. When you take your photo you may see a faint bit of the background, but the crisp detail of your subject will be well worth it.

If you want the dark faint background to go away, this can easily be done in Photoshop with the 'levels' tool (under Image > Adjustments). Move the black slider up, and it will darken all dark-tone parts until they turn black. The midtone (grey slider) and highlight (white slider) can be used to further tweak the image. I think there's a smilar tool in GIMP.


.. Anyways, that's about all there is to snapping some nice easy shots (that I can think of in one sitting, anyways). Good luck .

[Tilly]

GIMP does the same thing levels-wise without killing my RAM. 1.25, so unstable but I love you so <3.

One thing that's fun to use in a glowy pic? Clear Zoid + one of those cheesy LED pens. I think Hidocker's done things with laser pointers too.

[SkyKnight]

Big thanks to you, Kitty-ears (is it okay to call you that?), I do have problems photographing at night, and I hope my techniques can improve with this.

[Hidocker]

Also, if your camera has some sort of timer function, that will save a lot of heartbreak. Powershots have 10sec, 2sec, or custom.

[DigitalMan]

Hmm, one thing you didn't cover: Focus.

The Sony Cybershot line (at least ones around the time of DSC-P93/73) have an auto-focus, where when you hold the shutter button down halfway, it'll focus, and a little frame thing on the LCD will turn green when it's focused right (or at least thinks it is). However, it has severe problems with low light, and often won't focus at all whatsoever in such conditions. I would assume many camera models have the same problem.

I had the idea of turning all the lights on, auto-focusing the camera, and while keeping it focused (keeping the shutter held down halfway on the Cybershot, your method may vary), have someone else turn the lights out, leaving only the blacklight or whatever light source you're using. Then you take the shot. Focus is dependant on distance, so I figured it would work.

However, I would love to hear any other suggestions, especially any that don't require a helper to go turn out the lights

[Alteka]

99% of all digital cameras have auto focus (the exception being some SLI models). It is actually harder to find ones with manual focus.

Most cameras have AiF beams, or at least anything nowadays over $150. However, a decent camera should not even need this for a black light photo if ambient secondary light is provided as mentioned above.

If a camera lacks AiF, I would suggest manual focus... although chances are a camera without the former will lack the latter too. The easiest substitute might be to use a flashlight, and either turn it off or bump it in another direction after autofocus is achieved. A nightlight could also be used if it's easy to flick off with one hand.

Hope that helps.