Night and Low-light Photography Photo Workshop

Moonlight as a main light source

It is possible to shoot landscapes at night, but

after the light of the sun has long faded from the

horizon, it does become more difficult. While the

moon is bright, especially compared to the dark

sky around it, it really isn’t very bright. So, when

you are shooting landscapes at night, you have to

allow for the moonlight to illuminate your scene,

and that usually involves either very long shutter

speeds, very high ISO settings, or wide open aper-

tures — usually a combination of all three.

Landscapes usually are shot with a small aperture

creating a deep depth of field; landscape photog-

raphy at night is no different. So that leaves you

way, you can make sure that you get the desired
exposure. Figure 10-5 was taken using aperture
priority mode with an aperture of f/2.8. The
camera metered the scene and picked a 1/5 second
shutter speed at ISO 6400. When photographing
in manual mode, you set the aperture and then
the shutter speed using the readings from the
built-in light meter, but after taking the first shot,
you can use either a faster or slower shutter speed.
For Figure 10-6, I used the manual mode and
worked out the settings based on a meter reading
using the spot meter. The exposure that I came
up with was 21 seconds using f/16 and ISO 1600.
This allowed the water to look a little softer,
which I thought was more pleasing to the eye, but
the exposures are very close to each other.

10-4

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Setting up on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge and shooting at night allowed me to get a view of the underside
of the bridge that is usually not seen. Taken at 2.5 seconds, f/5.6, and ISO 250.