 Becky Austin |
Shooting at night I work at a Christian college and I am working on our Yearbook. For the cover I want a picture of our building at night. It's a historic hotel, it's 10 stories tall, the color is beige or really light yellow. There are pretty windows on the top floor and the light shows through. On the cover I want the page black with a picture of the "Tower" (as we call it) off center. My digital doesn't do well at night. I have 2 different film cameras and one is an old pentax that's manual, the other I can set for manual. What settings should I use so that I can see the building and the sky around it be black?
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Sharon Day |
I've done buildings at night with Christmas lights from 2.5 to 4 seconds at F/16. I have an image of a building taken at night similiar to the one you described and I shot that one at 2.5 sec and F/16. It was compelely dark when I shot mine. It just depends on how dark it is. Will you shoot when it's completely black out of maybe have a little twilight in the scene? It also depends on the amount of ambient light in the scene as well as how bright the building is. You could use your digital camera to get an idea of the exposure you need then use the film camera for shooting the scene.
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robert G. Fately |
Becky, given the uncertainly of how dark it is when you take the shot, you could also use the technique of underexposing based on what the meter calculates. That is, light meters attempt to hit an 18% gray shade, which is fine for most instances. However, when you really want somethign to turn out dark or black, the meter can't "tell", so you should take the settings it offers and underexpose accordingly. For example, if the meter is happy with 2 seconds at f5.6 and you take the shot, you will see the skyline behind the building is pretty illuminated (almost like daylight - rather weird looking in itself). But if you take another shot at f11 or f16 - in other words, cut the light coming through the lens to 1/4 or 1/8th from the shot at 5.6 - then the sky can end up so underexposed that it becomes blacked out. You will need to bracket - that is, take a number of shots at different f-stops - so that you can be reasonably sure that one of them will end up the way you want.
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Kay Beausoleil |
Becky, if you don't want the light in the windows to blow out, it would be a good idea to shoot your image just after sunset, where the sky isn't completely dark. Many of the good night pictures you see aren't shot at night at all, but during what photographers refer to as the Magic Time, either within 30 minutes of sunset or 30 minutes before sunrise. Trust me, if you do it right, no one will ever know it wasn't the depth of night. And, as Sharon and Bob have told you, bracket, bracket, bracket!
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