Night street photography in Moscow - street photo at night

night street photography – very impressive pictures can be obtained, and you can miss too much, and then on the screen you will see porridge with no idea. So what needs to be done, to get good pictures?

Before you tell, how to shoot at night, worth finding out, what do we want to get, shooting in not the most suitable conditions for shooting?

I do not know, how are you, but I usually shoot at night, I want to get two types of pictures.

First – this is a night cityscape.

Second – this is a street photo. I.e, reflection of the nightlife of the city.

If you are shooting a night landscape, to get the best quality photos., you will need a tripod and you will shoot at slow shutter speeds. As you can imagine, this approach is not suitable for street photography. After all, life – this people. When shooting at a slow shutter speed, you get shadows instead of people.. What if the exposure is too long?, then there will be no shadows.

by the way, an excellent occasion to speculate about the place and significance of a person.

Means, if we decide to shoot the nightlife of the city right on the streets, sometimes few consecrated, then we have to compromise.

You can watch a video selection of night photos from the streets of Moscow, posted on Zen.

We'll have to find a balance between photosensitivity and shutter speed. What is it about, you ask?

At night, the camera matrix receives little light. I hope, that on film at night you're not going to shoot.

so: to get an acceptable image quality, we will have to decide at what shutter speed we can take a picture without shaking, not to smear it. This is the first.

Second, people don't stand still, and so we need to take into account, that you will have to shoot a moving object and to get a relatively clear photo you need, so that the exposure is short enough.

Of course, there are cases, when “blurring or soapy” images are acceptable, but everything has its limits. For excessive sharpness is not worth the haste, but the subject must be readable.

night street photography — Visible “blur” – here is the excerpt, and falling out of focus

ISO

I.e, we have to increase the sensitivity – ISO. Modern cameras are becoming more technologically advanced and even at high ISO they give good results, but it's still not worth pushing too hard. In the evening I shoot at ISO in the range 2000 – 5000. More bully, not worth it in my opinion. Although, if the scene is very inverted, can be twisted.

At all, it is worth noting, that street photography – it's not about razor sharpness, about the plot, event, the scene.

Excerpt

Excerpt – the most important indicator when shooting at night on the streets. Do you need, so that people can be seen and it is clear who it is – boy or girl, even so. Therefore, it is better to keep the shutter speed as a multiple of the focal length of the lens.. Not less. 50 mm – means exposure 1/50. Of course, you can say, that many cameras have matrix stabilization, and many lenses also have stabilization.

There is, and you can shoot a static scene handheld at shutter speed even in 1 give me a sec. It's right, but in our case we are talking about the dynamics. Objects in the frame are moving and in this case, stabilization does not really help. It's all about photography – for video, the situation is different and stabilization in video is a very useful thing.

Diaphragm

I almost forgot. Aperture is very important for shooting in low light.. The more aperture you have optics, all the better. You can open the aperture and shoot and the ISO does not have to be lifted so much. This is true in the evening on the illuminated streets. In such conditions, you can shoot almost at basic ISO. But there is one moment.

By opening the aperture, we decrease the depth of field. For autofocus lenses, this is not so scary., but nevertheless ... We shoot in the evening and at night, so the focus is slower, and then we remember, that objects are moving. I.e, there are restrictions. And if we shoot with a lens with manual focus? In such cases, a closed aperture forgives focus misses.. So that, with a diaphragm, you should also be careful.

Well, in general, The main thing – it's practice. Shoot more often and then you can find your style and balance between technical quality and artistry of pictures..

\I would like to give some examples of, what did i get, when I filmed in the evening and at night – this is Arbat, Red Square and Nikolskaya. Streets well lit – So, not too extreme, but it's still pretty dark.