Night and Low-light Photography Photo Workshop

Maximum aperture

The maximum aperture of the lens tells you how

big the biggest opening is. The bigger the open-

ing, the more light can reach the sensor. In low-

light situations where you need to have a fast

shutter speed to freeze the action, the more light

that can reach the sensor through the lens, the

better. When you look at a lens, you see that it

I wanted to get a photograph of Jackie Greene’s
guitar before he took the stage, and, because the
light was really low, I needed a lens with a very
wide maximum aperture to get the most light pos-
sible. I used an 85mm f/1.4 lens combined with
an ISO of 3200 to get the shot.

One advantage that zoom lenses have over
prime lenses, when it comes to photographing
at night, is that you can create some very cool
effects by zooming in or out while the shutter is
open. For example, when photographing lights, a
zoom lens can create great light trail effects, as
shown in Figure 3-7.

More on creating light trails with zoom

lenses can be found in Chapter 8.

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ABOUT THIS PHOTO By zooming out while taking the image, the light trails seem
to stretch from the edges to the cityscape. Taken at 15 seconds, f/9.0, and ISO 100.

3-7