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How to take better night shots with my non-SLR digital camera?

Turkish

Turkish

Lifer
Hello digital photography experts 🙂 I may be in need of your help. I have a Sony DSC-P9 Digital Camera and I am having a hard time taking night shots. For example I want to take pictures of skyscrapers in my city from a far distance. But whatever I do, my pictures are always too dark, and the lights on building won`t even appear... what am I doing wrong? My camera doesn`t let me play with settings much... Only things I can play with are:

ISO: 100 - 200 - 400 - Auto

White Balance: Room Light - Fluorescent Light - Cloudy - Sunny - Auto

Focus: 0.5m - 1.0m - 3.0m - 7.0m - Infinite - Center AF - Multi AF

And some setting called EV. Any idea what this is? It has around 20 values between +2 and -2.

So basically what setting should I play with in order to take better night shots?

Any resources that I can read on the subject?

Thanks a lot,

Xiety


 
1. Tripod (or sit it on something like the roof of your car)
2. Long exposure. (looks like your camera can only do a max of 2 second exposure... so use this and UP the ISO to 400)
3. Higher ISO = higher noise in pics though, so if 400 is too grainy, lower it to 200
4. Turn your flash off.
5. May want to set EV to +2 (to lighten the pics up a little)
 
Originally posted by: edro13
1. Tripod
2. 3+ sec. exposure.
Click to expand...

so I am guessing, EV is Exposure Value? So since my max is 2.0, I am out of luck for better night pictures? 🙁

 
Originally posted by: Xiety
so I am guessing, EV is Exposure Value? So since my max is 2.0, I am out of luck for better night pictures? 🙁
Click to expand...
Well, your EV is 2 max, but that's not how many seconds the shutter will be open. That is just how it digitally simulates exposure by lightening up the pic. Is there a 1/100 looking setting? If so, the max will be 2", which means 2 seconds, which means that the actual shutter will be open for 2 full seconds absorbing light. While it is open, you cannot move the camera or the pic will be very blurry.
 
Set to no flash (obviously)
Set ISO to 100.
Set focus to infinity or leave it at auto (I never had a problem with it)
EV is exposure value, this is to compensate for the light. Play around with it but try overexposing a notch or two.
Set on self timer
Find somewhere stable to put it, and set it up.
 
The previous posters have covered the basics.

Set ISO to 100 or maybe 200
Turn off the flash
Get a tripod
Decrease the shutter speed (1/2 second to 10 seconds or more)
 
Cool, thanks a lot edro13, kami333, and GTaudiophile 🙂 I tried a quick picture from my place, and increasing the exposure value helps a lot! You guys rock!

Xiety
 
On my canon A70 which i love i had a 15 second shutter setting.. took an amazing pic of the valley looking down from angeles crest.

You can use the flash, it will fire first light the foreground and then the background will be slowly develop... creates an interesting effect.
 
There are ways to remove most purple fringing, using photo edit tools. I did it to some pics a while back. Try searching Google for the techniques.

btw, nice photo!

 
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