Night photos with a digital camera

I like photographing at night. There is something both mysterious and exciting about how the light plays over surfaces creating deep shadows and unusual color.

Regardless of whether you are shooting with film or digital you need a tripod for clear images. I have been experimenting with night image-making on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 digital camera. This camera is rather interesting in that it has 4 low light or night mode settings. You can also use the manual setup on this camera. The images displayed on this page, used an aperture of f2.8, a shutter speed of between 6 to 8 seconds with an ISO on 80.

The aperture refers to the opening of the lens iris - measured in f-stops. The lower the number the wider the opening. So a f2.8 is a very wide aperture opening - used to trigger more light CCD chip. The higher the number the narrower the opening. So an f8 is a smaller opening - used to trigger less light.

The shutter speed refers to the simulation of the shutter curtain of a conventional camera and how long it is kept open. The faster the shutter speed the less light is let in. The slower the shutter speed the more light is let in. A shutter speed of 1/2000 is very fast, whereas a shutter speed of 8 seconds is very long.


The ISO simulates the sensitivity of film in response to light. An ISO of 80 is very low sensitivity which means it takes longer to burn to conventional film. ISO 80 is often used in bright light to record images. An ISO of 400 simulates very high film sensitivity and it is used in low light situations. Of course, there are ISO options in between these two, such as ISO 100 and ISO 200. These options are for more medium light situations like cloudy days or inside a building.

Why does this matter? There are a several issues to deal with when shooting at night. The amount of light needed to make an image and the amount of light available in the scene. The other issue - compact digital cameras that use the CCD technology to record the image, introduce a lot of noisey pixel artifacts when using higher ISO settings such as 200 to 400.

So how do you deal with the unwanted noise? One way is to shoot with a very wide f-stop - f2.8, a long shutter speed - 8 seconds and low ISO setting - 80. These settings will allow you to capture a night scene with minimal noise artifacts. However, at such settings you can not move the camera while recording the image. This means any movement or vibration of the camera will result in a blurry image. It is impossible to hand hold a camera at such settings.

SOOOOO.... It is important to have a tripod hold the camera while taking the picture. You can get inexpensive, light-weight tripod solutions ranging from $4 mini pods to under $100 Bogens travel tripods. It depends on what you can afford and what you want to accomplish. I have a medium weight Bogen 3021 with a three-way pan head that is used with my heavier cameras for landscape work for instance. However, lugging it around while traveling is not my idea of fun. So I bought a Pedco Ultrapod II that has a very clever design. It can fold out as a table top tripod or it can be attached to an available pole or tree limb if I am in the field. It is compact, light-weight and cost about $16 at REI. It is also strong enough to hold my old Canon 35mm camera. The images you see here are taken with the camera on the tripod that has been attached to a stop sign post. The only blur you will see are objects, such as tree limbs, that are moving in the wind.

The next thing to do is to set the camera's timer option to 2 or 10 seconds. Then depress the shutter button half way to focus and all the way to take a picture. Wait without touching the camera. The timer will count down which gives the camera time to become still, the shutter will engage and a crisp image will be recorded.

Unfiltered image with noise

The other set of tools out there for getting rid of the pesky noise pixels are two very nice applications or plugins that will remove the little mites by filtering - Noise Ninja and NoiseWare. Both apps have five star ratings and work on either Mac OS or PC systems. I suggest that you test both of them by downloading the demo versions to see which app you like the best. I am currently experimenting with the Noise Ninja - here is a sample of what I have found to date.

Filtered image without noise

Noise Ninja is made by PictureCode and has a stand-alone app or a PhotoShop plugin to choose from. Go to their site for a FREE trial version. The cost is about $35 - $45 for a home license.

Noiseware is made by Imagenomic and has some very cool additional feature controls. It comes in standard and professional versions at a price range between $50 to $70 for a license. You can also download a FREE 15-day trial version.

Choosing a camera

I hear from my students, questions about what type of digital camera to buy. When buying a camera, especially for the first time, money is the main concern for some students - for others status is the main need.

My solution, take a look at the type of photographs you want to take. Are you just taking snapshots of family and friends? What about school projects? How much control over the way the camera takes an image do you want to have? Do you want to do night or low light photography? And there are several other questions I can think of to ask yourself about taking images before you spend your money on a camera.

I have several cameras that I use depending on the project I might be working on at the time. For instance, I have a Mamiya c330 twin lens reflex film based camera. The reason I bought this camera was that I had tried a Yashica during my grad studies and fell in love with the square image format. The proportions reminded me of my Dad's old family photos.

A friend, Hanna, suggested the Mamiya c330 because it was the only twin lens reflex made that had interchangeable lenses. It took a while to save the money, but I purchased one for my birthday from a photographer on ebay. I have never been sorry. The lens is sharp and crisp. This camera has taught me so much just with the standard 80 mm lens. It can do very up close macro work as well as normal scene work. I always carry a Sekonic meter with me for light measurement. However, this camera is not a travel camera. It is heavy! So I use it primarily for staged or studio work. It is incredible for portriature.

I also have a 4x5 format pinhole camera from Zero Image. I use it primarily for landscape and prop work. It is hand crafted - simple design that lets me do wonderful moody black and white imagery. I can use either 4x5 cut film in carriers or my Polaroid 545 Pro for instant imaging. It is great fun to work with.

My husband finally talked me into getting my first digital camera for our summer vacation. I have quite a few cameras collected over the years. Some I have bought - some given to me as gifts. Not one of them is a digital. I really like my film mainly for the quality and the art of learning to see light.

So I had to think about what I wanted in a digital camera. Yes, I thought about cost. But if I wanted to save money I would use my Canon WP-1. It is small, water-resistant, can do close ups as well as normal scenery. I will take it with me for the kayak trip. But it would be nice to have a digital backup for the convenience of immediate image feedback. For the digital, one of the big considerations was size. I wanted to enjoy my vacation and document it without carrying a lot of equipment. I also thought about what will I do with it after the vacation. A scouting camera would be nice to have to record a location for later imagery with my Mamiya or pinhole cameras.

A small compact digital would be ideal. I wanted a 6 to 8 mexapixel quality. But I also wanted more control than just automatic. I am used to working with apeture and shutter priorty controls from my old Canon AE-1 35 mm. It allows me to take quick images based on my in camera metering system. So the new digital had to have control options; like manual focus, apeture, shutter, and manual priorty, custom white balance, etc. I wanted a choice of ISO options. I also like to shoot in low light or night situations, so a noise reduction option is critical. As to file formats, I wanted more flexibility than just the compressed jpeg format. I wanted the ability to work with RAW and TIFF image formats. These are formats with out any compression which always loses pixel information. Most of the new digitals have the ability to do movies which is not the highest on my list of features but if it is there I want it to be QuickTime compatible because I use a Mac computer platform for editing.

My first look at cameras were at the name brands of Canon and Nikon. Both have really sharp lens systems. The Canon Powershot series is rather nice with 7+megapixels. But the Canon compact range digitals have a clunky interface in my opinion and are too automatic driven. The Nikon Coolpix cameras also have some nice choices with 7+megapixels. What I am not fond of with the Nikons is their habit of being very proprietory with their formats. These cameras are priced between $300 to $350. Both cameras use the CCD chips which have more trouble with low light and night scenes. There is a lot more noise artifacts in the digital data.

I broadened my scope to other brands. One is the new Leica compact digitals. A Leica lens is legendary for crisp sharp images. And they are SO ELEGANT AND COOOL! I have always wanted a Leica. But the Leica D-LUX2 price point is around $800. A bit too much for me.

Both Sony, Kodak and Fuji have some very creative compact cameras. The new Fuji Finepix E900 boasts a 9+ megapixel amd a RAW image format. But the RAW image format is not supported by PhotoShop CS2. So you get the ability to create with a RAW format but no way to manipulate it unless you convert it to TIF image format first. Price range from $320 to $450.

I finally stumbled on to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1. It looks just like the Leica Leica D-LUX2! It has a Leica DC lens and a metal body. The menus and interface are easy to learn and quick to use. It has 8+ megapixel quality. Shoots RAW and TIFF image formats in addition to JPEG. The RAW image format can in brought into Photoshop CS2 for manipulation. It has 3 image ratios - 3:4, 4:3, and 16:9 which is great for panoramics or viewing on HDTV. Manual and AutoFocus options are present as well as an image stabilization feature. The image stabilization is great for low light situations like museums where flash and tripods are not allowed. The retail price is $599 but I got mine at Amazon for $470. B&H Photo and Video also has them for that price. These are two vendors I trust.

A note to be careful when you buy online. Some digital camera vendors will display very low prices for the cameras and then try to sell you the memory cards and extra batteries at inflated prices. When you tell them you want only the camera they will tell you that they are out of stock and call back in 2-3 weeks. It is a scam.

If you are looking to buy a camera, first think about what you are going to do with it. What type of images you want to make. Then match the features of the camera to fit your function. Do you homework and investigate the options. There are a lot of sites out there that have real world reviews and forums on the various cameras. Just to mention few, Image-resource and DPReview for starters. Image-resource has a little product advisor that will help you decide the kind of camera you might be looking for as well as in-depth reviews. DPReview also has buying guides and comparison charts. My philosophy is to buy the best tool with the features that assist me to make images at a cost I can afford.

Be informed with your choices and the camera will serve you for quite a while feature wise.

Digital Camera-Panasonic LX1K

I just purchased a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 digtial camera. I needed a "scouting" camera that would also let me experiment with manual settings. The Lumix is the size of a point and shoot but has some awesome features. It also has a Leica lens that is one of the sharpest lens made. The lens has threads for filters to be attached. I am going to immediately find a UV filter to protect the lens. It has a metal body not plastic.



This camera lets me work with a number of quality formats, including Raw and Tif as well as the standard Jpg. It also allows me to work with different image size ratios such as 3:2, 4:3, and 16:9. At the 16:9 image ratio the camera is a 8.4MG resolution. It has a manual focus option as well as an auto focus. I can bring up a histogram to see the exposure range of the scene. The only downside is the high level of noise introduced at the ISO 400 range. But you can get around that if you learn to shoot in manual format such as apeture or shutter priorty with an ISO around 80 to 100 on a tripod.

The battery lasts quite a while even with the zooming operation. It also charges reasonably fast. I do suggest getting a backup it you are out in the field for hours at a time. But I operated on the battery for about an hour's shooting time with about a third of the battery being used. This was daylight time. I haven't experimented with flash at night yet.

I also reccommend a fast performance 1GB SD memory card. Today I was shooting on the Raw capture setting with the 16:9 ratio. 52 images will fit on the 1GB card in this mode. It surprised me that you get two files when you are shooting like this. One of the files is the Jpg, the companion file is in the Raw format. The Jpg file is typically between 1.8 to 2+ MB but the Raw file is a whopping 16 to 20 MB. The Raw file carries more image data information than the Jpg. Jpg, for those who don't know the difference, is a compression format that eliminates image data in favor of a smaller file.



I opened the Raw files in PhotoShop and it immediately came up with a dialog box that allows you to configure the RGB color space. In the photographer's world many prefer the PhotoPro RGB due to it's wide color space range which should give you more color information to work with. It also allows the user to color correct, choose a color temperature, tints, whether you want 8-bit or 16 bit color depth, exposure compensation in the shadows and highlights. Note: some operations in Photoshop cannot be done when in 16-bit color depth, but if you want to work with straight photos with the most color information 16-bit is better. Just know that your file will be double in size. When you click "Open" The Raw image will open in Photoshop for other manipulations.

I am including a couple of images to show what this camera can do.

The top images of the door with the Keep Out letters and the pine tree were shot on Apeture priorty, 80 ISO, Cloudy White Balance, 16:9 image ratio

The image below was created in Photoshop using a PhotoMerge operation of two 16:9 images that overlap by each other about a third. They were shot on Shutter priorty, 80 ISO, Cloudy White Balance, 16:9 ratio. I brought them into Photoshop as Raw images and used the PhotoPro RGB color setting at 8-bit color depth. Note: that the Photomerge operation will not work on 16-bit images.