Photography At Night

Undertaking photography at night brings its own set of challenges and rewards. Night hours lack the one thing that is so crucial in photography and that is light, however this lack of light has the ability to produce the most amazing results, if you have the patience and knowledge of your equipment. With night photography you can perform, light trails of cars on roads, star trails and even astro-photography. Each bring with it challenges and equipment specifications. All require you to have a tripod and a lens that has a really wide aperture, at least an f 2.0 I would say. Some like the light trails you can do from bridges or cross walks, or even on the shoulder of the road way (safely of course). The star trails is better done in areas away from the bright lights of cities as well as their light pollution, this also applies to the astro photography. It would be helpful if you had a telescope for the astro-photography also. Some key things to remember with photography at night:

You usually need a tripod.

An overly high ISO setting is going to cause problems and make you image look grainy.

A lens with a wide aperture is always a good thing to have. I tried night photos at an event with a lens that had a small aperture and no speedlite, was a disaster.

A speedlite may be necessary depending on what you are shooting.

What are some examples of night photography you like?

Lens Assignment

One exercise to improve your photography technique as well as the knowledge of your equipment is to attach one lens to your camera and use that lens only for a week or two weeks. Shooting everything and anything. This really expands your abilities, also if you use a prime lens such as the nifty 50mm, with its fixed aperture of 1.8 and better you really have to move around to get the best angle sometimes, even moving closer to your subject because you do not have a zoom lens. Now suppose you only have the kit lens or two kit lenses that came with the camera, these would usually be a short zoom and a telephoto lens, (sadly of variable aperture) What you can do is adjust the zoom ring to a specific focal length and leave it there, no matter how tempting it is to adjust your zoom don't! Practice this and it should really open up a new set of options for you.

Weddings & Such Things

Caterers, location, the music an open bar, THE DRESS oh and the guy that take the photos. Wedding photography is huge, huge business, locally as well as internationally. Photographing a wedding is not for the faint hearted, especially if you are the primary shooter. the top photographers in this field can command top dollar, as the client you are paying for their expertise and all the gear they bring. As a beginner I would not photograph a wedding as the primary shooter. Sure there are many great tutorials available on what to do for a wedding but all seemed to targeted towards professionals. In my view the best way to acquire the experience necessary is to be a second shooter to a professional. I have photographed a friend's wedding however it was nothing official, I stayed out of the way of the official photographer's way and I got some decent shots. What did I learn from this experience you ask?

• Your feet hurt, ALOT, for the entire day expect to be on your feet. It is hard work.
• Always have extra batteries physically on you, not in your car or in your bag which is located somewhere in the reception hall, have them on you.
• Flash diffusers help, no one wants to look like a ghost.
• Know your camera's flash sync speed, exceeding this produces some not to nice effects.
• Try to anticipate the shot and position of the subject and position yourself to capture it.
• If possible have two camera bodies with two lenses to prevent having to change lenses mid shoot and miss a key moment.
• Auto mode will not work for a wedding, you need to be comfortable in manual mode.

Essential Gear

Photography is one of those activities that just has alot of gear, or specifically additional gear that you would just love to spend those hard earned dollars on. There is an entire industry outside of the usual brand names, devoted to supplying photographers with the best, most expensive gear. If you are not careful you can find yourself buying many un-necessary things. There are a few things that in my experience as a beginner I think are important, which are shown in the two tables below.

Is there any essential gear you think I left out? Please indicate it via a comment.

The Macro World

See a world that is rarely seen, one which in our busy lives, we just pass by without really paying much attention to. Macro photography allows you to enjoy a world smaller than the one we typically operate in but still very complex. In doing macro photography perhaps the most important piece of equipment, aside from the camera body, tripod and flash is the lens itself. There are several ways to go about it, purchase a specialized macro lens, use extension tubes or reverse your lens. We will examine two of these options. 

Macro Lens: There are many focal lengths of macro lens, from 50 mm up to 200 mm. A top quality macro lens will set you back a fair amount of dollars and be of a fixed aperture (none of that variable aperture stuff) 

Extension Tubes: Extension tubes offer a much cheaper alternative to purchasing a macro lens. An extension tube simply goes between your lens and the camera body. It increases the distance from the camera and moves the front of the lens closer to the subject. There are two types of extension tubes, manual and automatic. Using the manual ones means that you will lose the autofocus of your camera as well as aperture control. The automatic tubes allow you to keep these features. Below I put a photo of the extension tubes I use to give you an idea of what they look like.

Do you have any macro shots you may like to see??