Techniques for capturing night street photos with a Canon 500D camera

I would like to give you a detailed explanation of how to capture night street photos with a Canon 500D camera.

Tips:

In the night's corner capturing, the skillful use of ISO sensitivity and the choice of white balance are very important.

 

 

This is by chance to see the beautiful scenery on the side of the road. When shooting, the orange light source is not compensated, and the current color is actually reproduced. In addition, in order to avoid hand jitters during camera shooting, a lens with a hand jitters compensation mechanism (IS) IS used to increase the camera's ISO sensitivity.

Shooting Data

Camera: Canon 500D

Lens: EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS/program auto exposure (F3.5, 1/30 s)/ISO 1600/white balance: Daylight

Canon 500D shooting steps:

1. Set the shooting mode to automatic program exposure (P)

 

 

The automatic exposure mode is used here, which is also frequently used during daytime shooting. Because the program's automatic exposure mode can be determined based on the surrounding brightness, so as to automatically select the appropriate exposure value, it is also very convenient in night photography. If you are challenging night photography for the first time, we recommend that you use this mode first.

2. You can set the ISO sensitivity to prevent hand jitter.

 

 

Note the hand jitter caused by low-speed shutter. Although a lens equipped with a hand jitter compensation mechanism (IS) IS used, to ensure the shooting quality, it IS necessary to ensure a high shutter speed as much as possible. The ISO sensitivity can be continuously improved based on the brightness of the shooting scenario until a proper shutter speed is obtained. The shutter speed is assumed to be 1/30 seconds, so the ISO sensitivity is set to ISO 1600.

3. Set white balance to "daylight" to highlight the atmosphere

 

 

Although it is more convenient to use automatic white balance in many scenarios during the day, when shooting night scenes, it sometimes feels that automatic white balance is insufficient to highlight the atmosphere. At this time, you can try to select "daylight" and other preset White balances, consciously make the image color to get better results.

4. Press the shutter button in a stable position

 

 

After the camera parameters are set, the two arm is naturally tightened and the upper body is fixed, and then the shutter button is firmly pressed. Note that you should not press it with your fingertip, but press it steadily without causing too much jitter to the camera.

Advanced shooting skills:

Find a place that can act as a tripod

 

 

Sometimes, even with the above settings, there will still be a situation where the shutter speed cannot be reached and there will be obvious hand jitter. At this time, you can use the wall head and other places where you can place the camera to safely release the shutter. However, after the camera is placed on other objects, it is not easy to change the up and down angles. Therefore, you can fold a small handkerchief on the bottom of the camera to adjust the shooting angle.

Select an appropriate shutter speed for special conditions of night scenes

The key to shooting night scenes with a handheld camera is the choice of shutter speed. Generally, the "one second focal length" is the lowest speed to prevent hand jitter. However, because the night scenes are mostly composed of light sources, the jitter is more obvious. Therefore, we recommend that you use a shutter speed that is faster than the usual shutter speed.

Next, let's take a look at how to determine the proper shutter speed. For example, when using an EOS 500D with a EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS (35mm equivalent focal length of 29-88mm) lens, when the focal length of 18mm (equivalent to 29mm) is used to reach the maximum shooting range, the shutter speed must be set to "1/29" based on the above calculation method ", that is, the shutter speed up and down is 1/30 seconds. In addition, you can actively use a lens equipped with a hand jitter compensation mechanism (IS. The compensation effect varies depending on the lens. This time, a lens with a shutter speed of about 4 levels is used to effectively prevent hand jitter.

All right, the above information is the detailed analysis and sharing of Canon 500D camera capturing night street photos for photography enthusiasts, I believe that you are now very clear about the capturing skills, so all of you will follow the tips above to capture beautiful night street photos by yourself.