night shot A80

[kush2004]

Can someone give some setting suggestions to shoot night shots. I tried lot with setting shutter speed/aperture in M mode but not getting much success. I am not using the tripod.


Thanks
kush

[picture-this]

If you don't have a tripod place the camera on something and use the two second timer mode to aid in avoiding camera movement. Keep shooting M mode and play with the ISO setting.

[Moppie]

Before we can properly help you, you need to help us.

What sort of "night shots" are you trying?
Whats your subject, and what sort of light are you having to deal with.

[kush2004]

I tried taking a shot of illuminated building/road from a distance of around 200 mtrs. from a terrace of one building with very low light.
Next shot I tried taking from around 10 mtrs away from the object with some light.

But I experienced lot of noise in photos & it looks like the pixels were scattered if there is a bright light in the photo.

I am not an experienced/proffesional photographer but atleast want to get good snaps from my A80. I get noise in snaps if i take it from a distance or close from an object in night. I want to know what settings should i place to get good result in both the above cases.

I tried with default night mode but if i dont use flash with night mode i dont get much noise but get a dark picture but if i use flash i get lot of noise.


Thanks in advance

[Jon]

You're going to need a tripod or a good solid place to rest the camera. You don't have very much control over shutter speed - max is 15 sec. If you go to manual mode, Tv or Av, you can set the ISO to 50 or 100, which will be less noisy than the higher ISO settings. But you'll generally see noise in seriously underexposed areas, as the electronics try to compensate. Meter up close on one of the lighted areas and use that setting for a manual exposure once you've re-composed the scene the way you want. And try one of the noise-reducing software add-ins or stand-alones that are out there.

[asfd]

I agree with Jon: Shoot in ISO 50 wide-open as long as it as to be then if your image is too noisy send it to Noiseware Community Edition a noise eliminator freeware.

[Moppie]

ISO 50 or 100 is right, anything else will produce to much noise.

However don't shoot wide open. At anything wider than F5.6 the A80, like all the A series, suffers badly from flare caused by bright lights present in long exposures.
You are better off shooting F7.1 or F8 and useing a longer shutter time than a lower F stop.

Set the apature, make sure the camera is on a tripod, or sitting on something stable, start with a shutter speed is about 1sec and use the 2sec timer to take the shot.
See how it looks, check the histogram, then adjust the exposure as needed to get the effect you want.

[Jon]

With a maximum exposure time of 15 seconds, there may not be much choice but going wide open and living with the flare.

[Bodryn]

Here's an example of what you might expect. This was 15 seconds at f/2.8 at ISO 200 using a Canon A70. You will note there is a lot of noise in the darker areas. I haven't done anything to clean this up. This was just experimentation. You can't do this without a tripod.

[Bodryn]

Same photo with Jasc one-click photofix. Picture is brightened, but much more noise is evident. No attempt made to reduce noise. For what it's worth, that greenish glow is aurora borealis. It wasn't bright that night but it was visible.