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.