I own an outdoor lighting company, and need to improve my nighttime photography skills. I will be shooting landscape lighting jobs in the early evenings/nights. I have hired professionals to do this for me in the past, but I really need to learn how to do it on my own. Any tips for shooting outdoor lighting at night? Camera is a Canon EOS Rebel T5, and yes, I do have a tripod. Thanks in advance!
Shooting at night?
- Thread starter Iloverootbeer
- Start date
Welcome to B&B, Sir Rootbeer!!
Congrats on your lighting company!!
Here are my few tips!!
You already have nice camera and tripod!
You need remote cord to remove any movement on the shutter button!
Also, 'mirror up' setting to remove mirror flap movement.
And, shoot at/shortly after dusk, to keep a little ambient light to balance your electric lights.
Use small aperture (f/16 or lower) to get good depth of field plus extra sparkle in lights.
Little or no wind is best; clear, dark sky also helps.
Lastly, some experience and experimentation!
With a little time, you'll get great results!!
- Thread starter
- #3
Thank you for the welcome and the helpful post my friend! I will try the things you mentioned. I do need to buy a remote button for the camera. Can you explain what the “mirror up” feature is and what it does? I will need to experiment and take lots of pictures! Beautiful palms in your picture!
'Mirror up' from my SLR days... locks the mirror in the raised, out of the way position before the shutter is tripped.
Until you get a remote you could use the self timer to trip the shutter, start the timer and remove your hands from camera and a few seconds later the shutter is triggered.
dave
Until you get a remote you could use the self timer to trip the shutter, start the timer and remove your hands from camera and a few seconds later the shutter is triggered.
dave
- Thread starter
- #5
Thanks for the explanation Dave. Is there a specific button on the camera that locks the mirror, or does that happen automatically when you push halfway down on the shoot button? Hope that’s not a dumb question, as I said, I’m pretty new to this
Not at all familiar with your camera but found a manual reference on line and if all else fails there is info from the ubiquitous help book series out there, probably explained better there.
Mirror Lockup To Reduce Camera Shake - Canon EOS Rebel T5i Instruction Manual [Page 142]
dave
Mirror Lockup To Reduce Camera Shake - Canon EOS Rebel T5i Instruction Manual [Page 142]
dave
- Thread starter
- #7
Thank you for your help Dave! Much appreciated!
You're welcome, happy to lend a hand where i can!
dave
dave
As long as there is no wind, try to use a low ISO. The base ISO on the T5 is ISO 100. Use ISO 100 or 200 to reduce noise in the image. This may mean long exposures but with a steady tripod that won't matter unless wind is moving something in your image. Note that moving things will not be sharp with long exposures. If the needed exposure is longer than 30 seconds, then you will need a cable release and bulb mode. Then you will manually time the exposure using a stop watch on your phone because 30 seconds is the longest exposure the camera will do on its own.
- Thread starter
- #10
Thank you for the tips whitebar, I appreciate the camera-specific info! Hopefully I will be able to get out to the property to shoot sometime this week. I will let you all know how it goes
