Preliminary preparation for shooting city night scenes
Generally speaking, I will take 8- 15mm, 14mm, 16-35mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses to get different angles of view. In addition, you should also bring a large tripod with excellent stability, a cable release that can lock the shutter, spare batteries, lighting equipment, filters, black cardboard, and winter clothes. The stability of tripod is very important, especially on the roof, where the wind is much stronger than on the ground. The tripod is likely to shake after a long exposure. In addition, night shooting is very power-consuming, especially real-time shooting, so you should have enough batteries.
It is very important to step on the spot in advance.
The best way to show a grand scene is to choose the commanding heights. This perspective is conducive to expressing the space and level of architecture and the relationship between architecture and environment. In order to find the best shooting position, we must check the shooting point in advance. First of all, we must understand the location and surrounding environment of the shooting place; Secondly, climb to the nearby commanding heights to observe the field of vision and find the most suitable shooting angle; Finally, wait for the good weather, arrive at the shooting location in advance and prepare for shooting.
The two photos were also taken of Xizhimen overpass, but because of the angle, the two photos are judgmental, so it is essential to step on the spot beforehand.
The shooting time is very short.
Night photography doesn't wait until dark. Taking Beijing in winter as an example, the brightness and color of the sky are most suitable for shooting during 17:20~ 17:40. In addition, consider the level of the sky. Cloudy days are more suitable for representing the sky after sunset than cloudless days. So when the weather is fine, it can be said that 50% of the shooting has been completed. It is recommended to shoot after rain and snow, because the air quality in big cities is not good, and the air quality will be much worse every other day. In addition to paying attention to the sunny weather, we should also pay attention to whether the PM value on the day of shooting is 0? Excellent? . Try to shoot on cloudy days, so that the sky won't look monotonous.
Adjust camera parameters and settings
Manual exposure mode+spot metering mode is recommended for shooting. The light is complicated at night, so automatic metering may not be accurate. At this time, the darkest and brightest areas in the picture can be measured by spot metering, and then the exposure is carried out at the middle value, and then the exposure is fine-tuned according to the playback picture.
To keep the picture warm, you can set the white balance to daylight mode. When it is set to incandescent lamp mode, the original color of night scene can be reproduced more realistically. When the picture has no special color orientation, it is recommended to use automatic white balance mode to shoot RAW format files.
A small aperture can make the picture clear, Ming Rui. Can you get it by narrowing the aperture? Xingmang? Effect. However, if the aperture is too small, the image quality will be degraded due to light diffraction, so it is better to control the aperture at F8~F 16. Generally speaking, the lower the sensitivity, the finer the image quality. It is suggested to set the sensitivity to ISO 100. If the camera's sensitivity can be set to ISO50, you can also get a slower shutter speed.
Overlooking the whole picture of Beijing from the rooftop of the second tallest wealth center in Beijing, waiting for the moment of night arrival. I used a gray gradient lens to dim the brightness of the sky, making sure I pressed the shutter when there was still light in the sky.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II/EF16-35mm F2.8L USM/F 811sec ISO 100 White Balance: Automatically use tripod and gradient mirror.
How to get accurate exposure
When the street lights are on after sunset, the picture brightness is high. If you want to shoot the effect of car trajectory, you need to use ND mirror to realize long exposure. At this time, the brightness of the sky will be brighter than the ground, so you should use a gray gradient mirror to balance the brightness of the picture, or use black cardboard to block it.
Generally speaking, you can use the combination of gray gradient mirror and ND mirror to shoot. The function of the gray gradient mirror is to darken the brightness of the sky, and the nd mirror is to increase the exposure of the ground (as the exposure time increases, the light track will increase the brightness of the ground and balance the brightness of the ground and the sky). The gradient mirror should be replaced at any time according to the gradual darkening of the sky brightness. If you don't use a gray gradient lens, you can use it? The operation method of shaking the black card is: block, leave and block again with black cardboard at the same frequency in front of the camera (in the sky) until the end of exposure. This method has no certain rules, and it depends entirely on experience and is adjusted according to the brightness of the sky. The frequency of shaking black cards and the duration of occlusion.
This picture especially seeks the composition of the road extension, because of the perspective, the near overpass is very wide and the far overpass is very narrow, creating a strong depth effect.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II/EF16-35mm F2.8L USM/F13 25-second ISO 100 white balance: tripod, gray gradient mirror and nd mirror are automatically used.
This is a picture taken with the telephoto end of a medium telephoto lens. Through the special composition form, the repetition of elements in the picture is strengthened, and the reflective glass texture on the surface also shows its texture.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II/EF 24-70mm2.8L USM/F810second ISO 100 White Balance: tripod automatic use.
Rational use of lens language
When shooting a city theme, you can choose the most suitable composition according to the focal length of the lens. The wide-angle lens can completely present the buildings in the field of vision in the picture, which is suitable for expressing the sense of space and depth of the building. At this time, you can choose three ways to compose the composition, depending on the feeling to be expressed, or the sky area is a little more, or the ground area is a little more. When using the medium focus lens, the composition should make full use of the formal beauty of lines as much as possible to enhance the depth of the picture, thus improving the appeal of the picture. The telephoto lens is more used to reflect the sense of compression, and to show the curve and shape of the building by intercepting the part of the building.
By chance, I found this angle in front of a window being renovated on the 19 floor, and took it with Lensbaby. This lens needs manual focusing. In order to freeze the moving car, I focused my eyes on the intersection of the viaduct and improved my sensitivity.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II/lens baby composition 50mm F2/F2 1/40s ISO3200 white balance: use tripod automatically.
Preparation for street shooting at night
The SLR camera with fast street view change and short shutter lag is the first choice, and the paraxial camera with small volume and low shutter sound is also the ideal choice. Another focus of street sweeping at night is high-sensitivity image quality. In extremely dark environment, it is very important to use a camera with high sensitivity and excellent image quality.
It is recommended to use a lens with a focal length of 28 mm to 50 mm when sweeping the street. This focal length is more stereoscopic, more in line with the perspective of most people, and can make the photos more realistic and spatial. Finally, if you want to show the sense of mobility of people coming and going, you can use a monopod to support it. Compared with tripods, monopods are easier to carry and use in crowded places, and because the exposure time is not as long as shooting city night scenes, monopods can completely cope.
Use moving lenses to create an amazing scene. If you can't avoid the interpersonal noisy environment, you can tilt the focal plane to blur all other elements in the picture. Use the shift lens to center the most attractive person in the picture, and then use the shift lens to blur other areas.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II/TS-E 24 mm F3.5L II/F3.51/60 seconds ISO3200 white balance: automatic.
Adjust camera parameters and settings
If you use a' large aperture lens such as F 1.2 or F 1.8, you can try to keep the sensitivity at ISO800~ISO 1600, which can make the noise in the picture relatively less! Of course, the latest digital cameras have very strong noise suppression performance, and you can use higher sensitivity to improve the shutter speed, but to be on the safe side, you should try to reduce the sensitivity.
Some cameras can set an upper limit on their automatic sensitivity, which is very suitable for street shooting at night. Set the sensitivity to automatic, then set the upper limit to ISO3200, and finally change the exposure mode to shutter priority mode, and set the shutter speed to about 1/60 seconds. The orange lights in the market are particularly warm. Under such a color temperature, it is very suitable for shooting emotional works. In order to express this hue, the color temperature can be set at 4800 K ~ 5000 K.
In front of a shop, there is plenty of indoor light, but the outdoor light is very dark, which is prone to silhouette effect. At this time, a couple appeared in the picture, so I adjusted the exposure and took a silhouette. For street sweeping shooting, it is very important to pay attention to improving the shutter speed so as not to miss the wonderful moment.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II/ef 35mm f1.4USM/f1.41/2500 seconds ISO2000 white balance: automatic.
How to shoot with live light
Winter nights in Beijing are very suitable for shooting. Although light pollution is rampant now, there are almost no stars in the night sky, but for street photographers, this kind of light is very good, especially suitable for street snapshots.
Because the contrast of street view at night is very strong, we should try to measure light in the brightest area, and then increase the exposure of 1~2. Manual exposure mode is recommended here, because it can carefully handle the exposure of specific areas and prevent the exposure instrument in the machine from being affected by accidental factors such as car lights.
When shooting in the street, you should make full use of the spotlight. If you want to increase exposure, the fastest and most convenient way is to increase sensitivity. Although increasing the sensitivity will increase the noise of the picture, it still has an advantage over using a flash. The use of flash will affect the subject and make the lighting effect unnatural.
Find an empty intersection and wait for the street lamp to light up. When the time and brightness are right, wait for pedestrians on the road to walk to the center of the picture before shooting. In order to get the starlight effect, a starlight mirror was added when shooting.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II/EF16-35mm F2.8L USM/F2.81/30s ISO 800 White Balance: automatically use starlight glasses.
Try to make interesting pictures.
When sweeping the street, I often have to shoot strangers, which seems to be a psychological obstacle for photographers, so I often rush to press the shutter and take pictures of the surprised expression of the subject. Communication is the most important thing when sweeping the street. In some interesting scenes, or when you need to shoot a stranger at close range, a simple greeting or two and a friendly smile can often close the psychological distance with the subject.
When shooting, you can also pay more attention to some easily overlooked elements, such as the shadow under the light, the silhouette in front of the window, the reality of the combination of static and dynamic, the effect of explosion, and even use the shifting lens to shoot.
Changing the focal length under long exposure can produce interesting image effects. The operation method is simple. First, measure the light and make a composition on the subject. If the tripod is fixed, it is recommended that the exposure time be set at around 1 sec. Press the shutter and turn the lens focus ring to zoom. You can choose to transform from telephoto end to wide-angle end, or from wide-angle end to telephoto end, and the effect is different.
Canon EOS 5d Mark II /EF 24-70mm2.8L USM/F22 6-second ISO 100 White Balance: Use tripod automatically.