What are the skills of night photography?

As night fell, the sky erased the last ray of afterglow. At this time, whether it is the bright moon in the sky, the stars all over the sky, or the gloom, or even the downpour, lightning and thunder, it is a hopeful night for photographers, and it is possible to create works with different meanings.

At night, there are rich contents to shoot from indoor to outdoor, and many scenes can only be shot after dark, so night is a vast field of photography creation. Of course, some subjects themselves, such as characters.

There is no clear boundary between day and night in the text, but it is necessary to express the corresponding environmental characteristics through photography to compare and render the atmosphere at night. As far as lighting techniques or tone processing are concerned, the usual practice is to darken or even blacken the background or sky of the picture, so that people can have a visual effect at night. Because, if the background of the picture or the tone of the sky is gray or white, the atmosphere at night will be lost. This is an important prerequisite for night shooting modeling and picture performance.

As we all know, the lighting sources of photography are mainly natural light and artificial light, but the illumination of natural light-moonlight and starlight is extremely low at night. Even if the moonlight is clear on the fifteenth day of each month in the summer calendar, it is only 0.2 lux (lumen/square meter per lux), which is equivalent to 1 foot candle lighting. If you can't see your fingers, or only the starlight, it will be more difficult to shoot the ground scenery on a cloudy night. Therefore, in this case, night photography mainly depends on artificial light, or as lighting, or as decoration, and even the luminous body itself is also the object of shooting.

The illumination of natural light such as moonlight is extremely low, so it needs to rely on artificial light. Although it causes many difficulties for night photography, it can completely turn unfavorable factors into favorable factors and take interesting photos. Therefore, as long as the situation is improved, night photography has many advantages:

1. Natural light at night includes moonlight, starlight, lightning, aurora and firefly light. In addition to incandescent lamps and electronic flashlights used for photographic lighting, artificial light also includes street lamps, indoor lamps, kerosene lamps, holiday fireworks lamps, fireworks lamps, firelight, candlelight, flashlight lights, etc., which are not or are not obvious during the day. Together with the luminous body itself, it can form a rare and wonderful picture.

2. The shape of the object in the dark can't be seen or photographed. When the subject receives certain illumination, the surrounding and background impurities are hidden in the dark, which is beneficial to highlight the subject, purify the background, and make the picture have simple aesthetic feeling and profound or quiet meaning.

3. The night illumination is low, and the space background is not bright, which is convenient for exposure and lighting techniques such as slow exposure, high-speed flash, multiple exposure, continuous flash (strobe), segmented moving flash, and adding decorative lights, forming special effects or strong atmosphere.

4. Night photography is easy to achieve low-key with black as the main tone, silhouette light of the subject under backlight illumination, black and white Gao Fancha and other modeling effects.

Of course, the mastery and utilization of the above favorable factors, as well as the production of various effects, are inseparable from the basic skills such as photography technology and skills, as well as artistic expressions such as conception and composition. Therefore, the use of various techniques and techniques of night shooting is to better express the theme, highlight the main body and make the content and form of the work as perfect as possible.

Exposure method of night photography

1, correct exposure Correct exposure is one of the basic conditions for obtaining good photographic effects. In most cases, the exposure time of night photography is long, so it is necessary to keep the camera stable, and try to use tripod and cable to release it; Due to low illumination and long exposure time, the image of "reciprocity law failure" will appear in the photographic performance of film, that is, the photographic sensitivity will decrease, so the exposure should be increased appropriately. Generally speaking, the aperture is 0.5 ~ 1 higher than the exposure index measured by the exposure meter as exposure compensation. Now take the commonly used GB 2 1 film as an example, and the exposure reference table is as follows:

Night photography exposure reference table

With regard to the subject, the exposure time is applied with an aperture.

Clear moon and telephoto lens1/30s 1 1

Lightning lines are clearly visible in the sky. B door 4 ~ 5.6.

Festival fireworks display complete flower-shaped gate B 8 ~ 1 1

The ground fireworks distance is about 5 meters, 1 s, 5.6 ~ 8.

Holiday Tiananmen Square Distance 400 m 1 sec 5.6

500 meters from the lighting construction site 1 ~ 2 minutes 5.6

Lighting distance from the water surface is 500m1~ 2min 5.6

The night view of the city is condescending, and the big scene lasts for 2 ~ 4 minutes and 8 minutes.

Distance to busy street10m 1 ~ 3 seconds 5.6.

Distance of lighting court is 5 ~10m1/30seconds 4

2. Slow exposure The so-called slow exposure means that the exposure time is longer than 1 second. For most cameras, B-gate timing (counting 1, 2, 3 ..., or hands) is usually used. In addition to the static night scene with low illumination, slow exposure can also be used to show luminous bodies moving at night, such as headlights coming and going, waving flashlights (turning on) in dark space to draw a certain light pattern, slowly moving stars and so on. , so that it can grow into long and varied bright lines by light irradiation on the film, which has the functions of beautifying the picture, increasing the atmosphere and drawing the shape.

3. Multiple exposures The empty background at night is generally dark, so it is easier to master multiple exposures than during the day, and each exposure should be calculated according to a single exposure. However, if the same object (such as an illuminated building) is photographed in combination with other objects, the total amount of multiple exposures can only be equivalent to the amount required for a normal exposure, otherwise the photographed object will be seriously overexposed. Therefore, the required amount of one exposure is assumed to be F8 and 1 sec. If four exposures are to be made, the exposure for each exposure should be F8 and 1/4 of1sec.

That is F8, 1/4 seconds, or F 16, 1 second. Because of the large number of exposures, it is troublesome to calculate separately, so it can be solved by assuming high-speed photosensitive film, that is to say, the actual sensitivity of the film is GB 2 1, which is equivalent to ASA 100. If three exposures are to be made, the film can be made with ASA300, four exposures with ASA400 and ten exposures with as 1000.

When shooting at night, in order to show the outline of the ground scene under the sky background at night, it is often necessary to take two exposures. For example, "Night on the Jialing River" (see attached photo), the first exposure was after sunset and before the ground light came on, using F5.6 and 1 s, which made the sky on the film slightly sensitive. The second exposure takes 5.6 and 2 minutes after the lights on the ground and water are turned on. For the first and second exposures, the position of the camera must be determined in advance, and the camera must be fixed in place to complete the two exposures.

4. When 4.multiflash shoots behemoths at night, such as large machine tools, ancient buildings and hotel living rooms. Through multi-position and multi-side shifting flashing, better overall lighting effect and distinctive modeling effect can be obtained. Night on the Great Wall is the cover work of mass photography 198 10, and it is a masterpiece of three authors who have changed shifts and flashed for many times. In the process of shooting, the flash was covered with transparent films of different colors, and the flash shifted more than 100 times.

5. Multi-prism rotating exposure shows the buildings with lights strung together on holiday nights. If you add a prism, pentaprism and other multi-prism sheets with a central plane in front of the camera lens, and rotate the additional lens at the same time of slow exposure, you can form an annular rotating light drawing line, which sets off the main body of the picture and adds aesthetic feeling and vitality (see Broadcasting Building, Monthly Award for Public Photography 1984). The main point of shooting is that the subject must be placed in the center of the picture.

6. According to the effect that the light spot can expose bright lines on the film, shake up the camera exposure, or move the camera to shoot the still light spot to achieve the same effect. For example, when shooting a night scene of a city, if there is a tripod that can swing the central column, a camera is mounted for slow exposure, and the camera can be swung up and down at the same time, a light drawing line that vibrates up and down can be formed (see Popular Photography 1984,No. 1 1, cover work "Ascending Special Zone"-/Kloc-.

There are various exposure methods, and the above are just a few examples. If we can combine different exposure methods, we can often achieve wonderful, novel and beautiful modeling effects.

Picture representation of night scene

The picture performance of photography involves modeling skills, composition layout, expression techniques, post-processing and so on. And there is no fixed pattern. So just take a few night scenes as an example to briefly contact the picture performance.

1, Festival Fireworks Show Every National Day and other festivals, the whole country rejoices, and the fireworks on the night of the festival add to the joyful atmosphere of the whole world. Therefore, most photographers like to shoot fireworks scenes on holiday nights. Shooting fireworks should be cleverly conceived and properly combined with ground scenery or characters to set off a warm festive atmosphere. Because fireworks itself is only a kind of figure, if you only see fireworks without foil, the meaning of the picture is insufficient except for aesthetic feeling.

There are usually three ways to combine fireworks with ground scenery or figures: ① release the time and place of fireworks in advance, select the shooting location in advance, and take photos with ground scenery or figures when releasing fireworks (see Public Photography No.8 1985 Festival Night). ② Choose an ideal angle to shoot the scene, leave enough space at the top of the picture, then shoot fireworks and make two exposures; Or shoot flowers first, leave enough space at the bottom of the picture, then shoot people who look up at the sky and watch the excitement, and also shoot two exposures; (3) shooting fireworks alone, the lower part of the picture is vacant, the other part shoots scenery or people alone, and the upper part is vacant; Overlap the film surfaces of these two negatives to enlarge the photo. The scenery on the ground echoes the fireworks in the sky, which plays a role in rendering a warm celebration atmosphere.

2. Party Performance "May Day Gala" (see photo) is the scene of a mass party held at the Beijing Working People's Cultural Palace. Because spotlight can't meet the needs of exposure, flash photography is adopted. In order not only to highlight the performance of the program, but also to show the grand occasion of the gathering with a large audience, we specially chose a higher shooting point at a little closer distance and took two flash shots to form a wide-screen open picture. Flash index 40, film GB 2 1, aperture between F5.6 ~ 8, 1/4 seconds, focusing on the performer.

On location, shoot the performers first, then the audience; The shutter speed of 1/4 seconds is mainly to take care of the exposure of the star-like colored lights on the tree and the two lanterns on the left side of the picture, so that they appear in the picture and render the festive atmosphere of the gala.

3, the performance of the lighting stadium table tennis, basketball, football and other night performances, according to the conventional stadium lighting, barely adapt to the exposure of photography. The chandelier of the table tennis court is slightly lower, and the luminous intensity is slightly lower; The football field has the highest lighting level and the largest lighting intensity; The lighting and height of the basketball court are between the above two, so the actual illumination of the three kinds of stadium lighting is basically similar.

The National Table Tennis Championships (see photo) were shot at a distance with the film of GB 2 1, F4, 1/30 seconds, and the focal length was relative to the referee position in the nearest division. The depth of field of F4 basically considers three zones. 1/30 seconds is not enough to shoot the agile movements of table tennis players, so we deliberately shoot at a slightly farther position (according to the factors related to the relative blur coefficient, the farther the distance, the slower the shutter speed can be), and press the shutter when the athletes, especially those in the recent competition area, are exercising, so that all the athletes' figures and postures are properly expressed.

4. The performance of "fake night scene" is to shoot night scenes in the moonlight. If there is enough exposure, the photos will become clear.

Appear as a daytime effect; On the other hand, shooting a scene in the sun, if the exposure is seriously insufficient, will become a "moonlit" scene. So people often use the latter method to shoot "night scenes", which is the so-called fake night scenes. To take this fake night scene, it is best to add a medium yellow color filter and take pictures with the sun when the sun is low; If combined with water reflection, it is more helpful to obtain

Wonderful effect.

There is also a fake night scene shooting method, that is, adding a red filter to shoot the scene in the sun (the exposure is calculated without adding a red filter), and darkening the blue sky with a red filter to make it appear dark gray or thick black in the photo, resulting in the illusion of the night sky. Therefore, when shooting a fake night scene, you should choose sunny days and shoot against the light. If it is sunny or cloudy, it is difficult to form the effect of "night sky" because it is covered by white clouds or gray clouds.

Matters needing attention in night photography

1, it is necessary to avoid direct exposure of the lens to nearby lights or oncoming strong light, so as to prevent halo and cause serious graying of the overall tone.

2. When shooting with black and white film at night, it is not advisable to add a yellow color filter, because the illumination at night is already very low, and the result of adding a color filter will only affect the exposure.

3. When you use the exposure meter to measure light at night, you should avoid strong light, otherwise you will get wrong metering readings.

4, multiple exposures at night, each exposure must block the lens (such as shooting fireworks, Mercedes-Benz lights for multiple exposures), so as to avoid other light entering the lens.

5, shooting lightning in the night sky, the picture must be combined with the ground scenery, otherwise only the lightning lines without the background of the scenery, it does not look like lightning.

6. Be sure to hold the camera steady when shooting at night, and slight shaking will have serious consequences. Therefore, even if the camera is mounted on a tripod, you should always be careful not to be blown by the wind during the slow exposure.