8

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / City Lights

One way to increase your chances of getting the

image you want is to use the auto bracketing

feature of your camera. You set the auto bracketing

function on your camera so that it takes a series of

photos each time you press the shutter button —

one with a –1 exposure value, one normal, and one

with a +1 exposure value. Bracketing can help you

get the image you want. If your camera doesn’t

have auto bracketing, you can use the exposure

on vacation. If you are on vacation, check with
the hotel staff on the best places to go and those
to avoid.

Using different shutter speeds

The longer the shutter is open, the more light is
allowed to reach the sensor in your camera.
However, the shutter speed also controls how
time is captured in your images: Open the shutter
speed for a tiny fraction of a second and you can
freeze a moment forever; allow the shutter to
open for a little longer and the razor-sharp scene
starts to blur; keep the shutter open for a long
time and items in motion can actually disappear
from your photo. When it comes to photograph-
ing city lights, there are no right or wrong shutter
speeds; just know what the approximate results
will be before taking the photo. When photo-
graphed with long shutter speeds, areas with a lot
of foot traffic will look empty and lifeless because
the moving figures will not be recorded. For areas
where there is car traffic, the cars are frozen when
using a fast shutter speed or rendered as light
trails with a slower shutter speed, as shown in
Figures 8-3 and 8-4.

It is impossible to give you the right settings to
use for street photography because the lighting is
different every time. It just takes a little experi-
mentation. I suggest that you start on shutter
speed priority so that you can decide how to por-
tray the passage of time in the scene. Depending
on how much of the scene is lit, the better
choices for metering modes are spot metering or
center-weighted metering. If the edges of the
frame are really dark, using these modes stops the
light meter from taking that darkness into
account and overexposing the resulting photo.

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Using a shutter speed 1/40 second actually

froze the traffic into individual cars. Taken at 1/40 second, f/2.8, and

ISO 1600.

8-3