I realised last night that I'm clueless when it comes to taking photos of Christmas lights on houses. I have a Fuji Finepix S5800 (P&S). So can any of you wonderfully knowledgeable people enlighten me on how to do it or at least tell me if it's doable?
Thanks :-)
Please note: I don't understand most technical stuff, for my benefit, please dumb it down for me lol.
ok just ran some tests on the lights across the street... if you use any of the automatic settings the lights will overexpose as the camera tries to make the house 'light'
So try these settings iso 100 (so there is very little noise) f/8 (so the lens is sharp) and about 1/2 second exposure...
hope that is not too technical... now go try some... see what you end up with...
@icywarm Thanks so much for that!! Now just to try to work out how to do all that on my camera haha. I don't have a tripod so I'll see if I can work around that.
@icywarm Oh that would be an awesome idea if we had any snow! I'm in Australia, middle of summer lol. I'll find something to take with me, I have until tomorrow night when we go looking at houses :-)
Your camera should have a manual (M) setting so you can set the aperture and shutter speed yourself. I found an online copy of the manual here which tells you how to do it (just in case you've lost yours)
if no tripod try setting camera on a fence or wall or anything. I used the pedestrian crossing button box to take my night shot yesterday with the lens cap under the lens to tilt the camera to the right angle!!!
Exposure: 1 sec (10/10)
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO Speed: 100
Focal Length: 14 mm
You can shoot a lot at 1/30 hand held, obviously depending how bright the light source is, even with a P & S.(Based on my experience with a Pentax Optio 5mp compact from 2005). The thing to do is to ignore what your camera tells you as it doesn't always know best and as has already been stated above, will often over expose night lights. My 365 features a few night scenes and all are shot hand held, no tripod. As ever, the thing is to give it a try & if you are one of these ultra steady people who can hand hold 1/25 or 1/15, no problem!
@amz87 I'll try to look some stuff up for you .... I have to drop boy child at Morisset markets for a 10am start - then to Dora Creek for a 10.30am. can you come over either of these with it to go over the camera? email me at carlita61@ymail.com numbers to catch up.
I use a point-and-shoot and have been able to get some decent Christmas light pictures. Experiment with the settings. My husband has good luck with his regular day settings, flash inclulded. My camera doesn't do so well with those. It does have a nighttime, fireworks, and candle settings. Each need a stable base to steady the camera. I am using a tripod, if you don't have one, use whatever you have. And then turn off the flash and use the timer for some shots so you can see how the pictures look. Using the timer gives the camera time to auto-focus.
Another bit of information that I picked up recently is to take the pictures at dusk and not in total darkness. This may be difficult time-wise but the pictures really look great when shot during early morning or early evening.
Some colors will really glow like blue and white. This effect can be adjusted using a photo editing program such as picasa. Adjust the shadows to eliminate them and you will see a much cleaner picture.
Thanks for all the great tips everyone!!! I'll try it tonight and let you know how it goes :-)
@misschuff Thanks for the offer Carlita! I'm super busy for the next couple weeks though. Does boy child work at the markets? So does my mother in law! lol
@becky_tamm I've tried using that for another night shot but instead of clearing up any light it has a super bright flash which defeats the purpose of the lights, it might also freak out the owners of the houses lol.
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exposure times based on how bright the lights are...
tests to come...
So try these settings iso 100 (so there is very little noise) f/8 (so the lens is sharp) and about 1/2 second exposure...
hope that is not too technical... now go try some... see what you end up with...
Exposure: 1 sec (10/10)
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO Speed: 100
Focal Length: 14 mm
and on pg 58 and 60 talk about the manual aperture and shutter speed .... give that a read ...
Another bit of information that I picked up recently is to take the pictures at dusk and not in total darkness. This may be difficult time-wise but the pictures really look great when shot during early morning or early evening.
Some colors will really glow like blue and white. This effect can be adjusted using a photo editing program such as picasa. Adjust the shadows to eliminate them and you will see a much cleaner picture.
@misschuff Thanks for the offer Carlita! I'm super busy for the next couple weeks though. Does boy child work at the markets? So does my mother in law! lol
@becky_tamm I've tried using that for another night shot but instead of clearing up any light it has a super bright flash which defeats the purpose of the lights, it might also freak out the owners of the houses lol.