What are the skills of portrait shooting at night?

Compared with portrait shooting during the day, portrait shooting at night is one of the more difficult subjects, and the probability of shooting a good film is not high. However, considering that most of our users, besides traveling, may use it most often when family and friends get together to go shopping or go out to play at night, so from a practical point of view, we should talk about the method of shooting portraits at this party and shopping at night.

We are divided into two parts: first, indoor shooting skills, such as friends having dinner and clubbing at night; Second, outdoor and night shopping shooting skills.

To tell the truth, if you are not a professional photographer, the equipment you use is not a SLR but a small card, and there are no necessary auxiliary tools such as a tripod, then it is really difficult to shoot a good film in these two environments. But we can also follow some basic precautions to improve the quality of photos as much as possible and leave precious memories for our party or outing. Considering the limitation of equipment (for example, ordinary users can't be equipped with two or more flashlights to shoot night scenes, and most people don't prepare tripods when they get together), this paper introduces some common shooting methods, which are as simple as possible. If you have your own shooting experience, please share it with us and learn and make progress with the netizens.

Beautiful party photos

There are several common problems in taking photos at parties: First, the photos taken are either faded or shaky, and the quality is poor. Second, occasionally there are two clear photos, which were taken after the flash was turned on. The result is a clear person and a blurred background. I don't know where it was taken without looking carefully. You took two pictures, he took two pictures, and the camera turned a big circle. Finally, I found that I wanted to find a clear photo as a souvenir, but I didn't.

In fact, if we want to take good photos at friends' parties, we can follow the following simple practices:

If you want to use it, use a large aperture: because the party time is mostly at night and the occasion is mostly indoors, it can't be compared with the outdoor natural light during the day. The dim light will prolong the exposure time and make the hand shake have a great influence on imaging. So please try to open the aperture to avoid shaking.

Use the flash carefully, and use ISO more: or a friend will say: The light is dim, just turn on the flash. Turning on the flash can really improve the brightness and prevent jitter. However, unless you are an experienced photographer who can run out of light, most of the photos taken with a flash in a dim environment are "pale", that is, the face is very bright, the surrounding environment becomes very dark, and the atmosphere of the venue is completely gone. Therefore, the author's suggestion is "use flash carefully", and you can try to improve ISO, even if you mention ISO800 (SLR can reach 1600). Although there will be noise, it is much stronger than jitter.

The color cast should be corrected: the color cast will be said after the jitter is over. Because the indoor light source is different from natural light, the camera will inevitably have a certain color cast when shooting. In fact, solving this problem is very simple. Select the corresponding mode for white balance, such as "incandescent white balance"; Or set the white balance manually. The specific method is: enter the "White Balance" menu, select the "Custom White Balance" option, then find a white object, such as a white tablecloth or wall, then aim the lens center at the white object and adjust the angle appropriately. When the whole screen is white, press the shutter, wait a moment and the camera will display "Done", and the white balance setting of the camera will be completed. After such processing, the color of the photo should be natural. Of course, relative to jitter, color cast is not a particularly serious problem. Many times, photos with a certain color cast are in line with the atmosphere of the party, which depends on the occasion of our party and your favorite style and effect.

At least have a wide-angle photo: no matter how many photos you take in one night, at least, you should have a family photo as a souvenir of the party. Of course, this kind of group photo doesn't have to be arranged in two rows like the usual meeting photo, and vivid photos can be taken by skillfully using the terrain of the party occasion. The author's suggestion is that even if there is no tripod, when taking this group photo, you should choose to put the camera on a platform or desktop and take a selfie after 10 seconds. Although it is a bit troublesome, the benefits are obvious. First, it can put everyone, including you, in the photo. Second, it can ensure the stability of the picture and the overall shape.

Learn to use up, everything is OK.

Outdoor night portraits are generally considered to be difficult scenes to shoot. The biggest problem in taking night photos is the complex lighting environment. The dim light outside at night will prolong the exposure time of the camera. If you don't have a tripod at hand, it's easy to shake. Although the flash is easy to use, it can only illuminate people, but the beautiful background can't. Even if the film is clear, it has no aesthetic feeling.

Therefore, if you want to take a beautiful portrait at night, the key is to use it up. Here we need to talk about our flash. If you are not a professional photographer, you probably won't bring a special flash when you go out at night. So how do we use the camera's own flash to get good results?

If you want to show the background and characters clearly, you need to use a flash mode called slow synchronization (or slow synchronization). When we use slow synchronous exposure, the person in front of the lens is illuminated by the flash, while the background behind the person is fully exposed by extending the shutter time. In this way, we can get clear and bright photos of people and backgrounds.

It needs special explanation here: when shooting in slow synchronization at night, you must explain to your friends that when taking a picture, the flash flashes, don't move the position immediately, and you must keep your posture for a while, because although the flash has flashed, the shutter is still exposed, and the photo may become blurred if you move at this time.

After this most important point, let's talk about several other places that need attention:

1, the setting of night scene shooting is complicated, so don't expect automatic setting. If there is a scene mode of night portrait, you can try to take a few pictures to see the effect. If the effect is not good, then choose aperture priority or full manual setting, and choose average metering mode and central focusing, so as to focus more accurately.

2. Turn up the aperture and improve the ISO. What is said here is that if there is no tripod, only these two methods can reduce jitter. Of course, the larger the aperture and ISO, the better. Ultimately, the quality of the image should be considered.

3. In order to pursue a bright background, we need to extend the exposure time of the shutter, and in order to pursue the stability of the picture, we need to shorten the shutter time as much as possible. How to solve this contradiction? My personal opinion is that it is better to make the picture underexposed than to focus on stability. If the exposure is insufficient, we can improve the brightness of the picture by simple PS processing, but if it is jitter, PS cannot handle it.

4. Let's talk about anti-shake. It is better to have a tripod. No, don't be too confident about your "iron fist". It is best to put the camera in a stable place and take a selfie after two seconds, which will greatly reduce the stability of the camera. Body, bicycle backseat or railing platform can be used.

The difficulty of night scene shooting lies in its complex lighting environment. But everything is not absolute, it is precisely because of the special lighting environment at night. Sometimes, when we consciously adopt some special shooting methods, we can get special effects, such as the traffic effect like lights, the starlight effect of thousands of lights and so on. It can be said that there is no fixed combination of technology and parameters in shooting, and its fun lies in creation, so you don't have to be too persistent about skills. As long as you experience more in the usual use, you can get satisfactory results.