Night Photos with SD300

[gjritter]

I just purchased an SD300. It's my first digital camera, and I'm thrilled with it so far. I am about as far as one could get from being a photography expert, so bear with me. :D

I like to take a picture of our house lit up with Christmas lights at night to put in our album each year. Last year, we took a picture with our Yashica T4, and it looks reasonably good. I tried taking essentially the same picture with the SD300, and the quality doesn't look as good. The image looks darker overall, but the lights are overexposed. I didn't use a tripod with either image.

What kind of settings should I be using with the SD300 to improve the image quality for such a shot? I'd be happy to post a scan of last year's picture along with this year's version if it would help.

Thanks,

Greg

[Jethro790]

I have the SD200 and I have had good luck shooting night photos on a tripod in the automatic mode. I simply turn the flash off and let the camera meter itself. I have not, however, shot any photos of Christmas lights- I could see the camera getting confused by the lights.

[Jon]

Are you trying to capture just the lights, or do you also want to get some detail of the surroundings? If you want just the lights, try manual mode or Tv at about 1/60 sec.

[gjritter]

I'd like to get some of the detail of the surroundings as well, although I'd really like the lights to look good. With the little bit of experimenting I did last night, it seemed like regardless of the exposure and ISO settings I chose, the image ended up being blurred and the lights overexposed, with varying degrees of detail in the surroundings. I'm sure a tripod would help with the blurriness of the photos, but I wasn't able to avoid overexposing the lights.

If you want just the lights, try manual mode or Tv at about 1/60 sec.

What is the Tv mode?

[Jon]

Tv is "Time value" or shutter priority, where you set the shutter speed and the camera selects an appropriate aperture. Sorry, I see now that's not available on the SD300. You might just use the tipod and experiment with shutter speeds for best effect. Maybe plug the lights into a dimmer for the photo.

[gjritter]

Thanks for the advice, Jon. The SD300 does have a long shutter mode that allows selection of shutter speeds between 1 and 15 seconds in various increments, but it wouldn't allow me to set it to anything below 1 second.

I'll see if I can pick up a dimmer today and try again tonight.

It sure would be nice if there were a way that I could duplicate the quality of the photo taken with my T4 last year though without having to resort to using a dimmer though. Last year's picture was just a snapshot taken holding the camera, with no tripod, dimmer, or special settings on the camera.

[Jon]

You might try faking it out . . . Set metering to Spot, move in close-ish to the lights (so a bright area fills the center spot), press the shutter down half-way to lock exposure (and focus), then move back and re-compose. Dialing in a -2 Exposure Compensation may help, too.

[gjritter]

Thanks again for the advice. I'll try the trick you recommended tonight. Also, any recommendations on a good tripod to go with this camera?

[Jethro790]

Lots of camera stores sell Silk brand tripods. They are good and cheap.

[Velvet G]

gjritter, I'm using a different Canon than you are (S1 IS here), but I've been doing some night shooting, especially lights this year and what I've found is that shooting with a long exposure and a tripod worked best for me. I got the detail I wanted without the lights being TOO overexposed.

Of course, your mileage may vary but I've linked the night shots I've taken and all have the EXIF data with them so you can see what ISO I used and how long the exposure was to create each one.

I found that setting the camera on a tripod and using the timer gave me the best results because even though mine does handheld shots wonderfully, allowing the camera to shoot without me pushing anything completely removed all blurring.

Here's a link to the night shots. Some were shot with filters, some weren't but you get the idea.

I think your camera has something called Night Snapshot (IIRC). You can try that on a tripod and if it doesn't work, I vote for long exposure. It will give the camera enough time to use the available light to capture the details you said you were missing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrian/sets/13119/

Hope it helps. I've been using mine for about 3 months now and figuring out how to make it do what my SLR did is a little tricky at times, but became much easier.

Good luck.

[gjritter]

Wow - those are some great looking shots. Thanks for the pointers.

I'm not sure how to read all of the EXIF data yet (for example, does an exposure time of 10/10 mean 1 second, or something else entirely?).

My camera doesn't give me complete control over the shutter speed - it's either auto, or I can turn on "long shutter mode", which allows me to select shutter speeds between 1 and 15 seconds. I think some combination of a long shutter speed and low ISO with a tripod should give me what I need. I'll probably pick up a tripod tomorrow and give it a try.