It’s been a bit of a rough year this year, and I’ve not got out with the camera as much as I would have liked to. When I have been out, many of the places were more suited to using the drone for the shot, but I get some that I was really happy with.

So I’m looking at the time of the year it is now and with the nights closing in quicker, it seems right to think more about night time photography.

I have a few places in mind like Chew Valley Lake and down at Severn Beach and capturing the new Severn bridge.

Night Photography

There is so much more complexity to night photography, working with high ISO, longer shutter speeds, manual mode, sharpen live image, type of lens, trypod, camera remote, stacking images, composition, light painting, photo stacking, editing and of course long nights, cold nights and most importantly searching for that location.

Many of the things I know about, but a few im having to research YouTube for answers on, which today was the 500 rule. This is finding what shutter speed you get before light trail. So you take the lens size (so I have a Sigma ART 18-35mm) and divide the number by 500 to get the maximum shutter speed before light trail.

Example.

18mm divided by 500 = 27secs

25mm divided by 500 = 20secs

35mm divided by 500 =14secs

Thank god for the calculator on the phone!

The ISO seems even more complicated and is a bit trial and area, but it's trying to get the ISO down to 100 that takes some calculations that to long to explain.

The other thing is the light from the moon, that I thought that you would need a full moon for most things, but it turns out if you want to capture the stars then it needs to be really dark and if you want the milky way, there are only certain times in the year that you can capture it well. This is where a good app like PhotoPills can help you look at the calendar and see when new moon is and maybe the best light for just normal stars and then the best time for the milky way. You even have AR so you can use your phone camera to see where things are in the night sky and not look blindly at the sky trying to find it.

So I’m only just breaking ground with night time photography and looking to maybe start next month, being October. So if anyone is interested in maybe joining me one evening or has any advise, then would love to hear from you, so PM me on Facebook and we can work something out.