Dec 18 2008
How To Get Great Pictures Of Christmas Lights
The camera exposure meter suggested F/4.5 at 20 Seconds. To properly expose this I used F/5.6 at 8 Seconds
The holiday lights are out – and if you live in the Puget Sound area, we are having an early snow. It looks like we might even have a White Christmas… something that happens once in a blue moon. But we’ll talk about photographing moons some other time.
The subject of this blog post is to help you photograph those wonderful holiday lights, from you own house, to Candy Cane Lane, to the Point Defiance Zoo Lights. With the snow on the ground – next years holiday card may be just a shot away.
What To Watch Out For
There are a few things to be aware of when taking photos are night.
The first, is noise. The long exposures are sure to bring out the small grain like artifacts in the dark areas. There are two main culprits that cause noise; high ISO speeds and sensors that over heat with long exposures. You can reduce the noise by turning on your cameras ‘noise reduction’ for long exposures setting.
You can also prevent noise by choosing to use a lower ISO. The photos taken here were done using ISO speed of 100.
Of course, the best solution is to buy the best camera available, generally the more expensive, newer DSLR cameras have almost no noise problem at longer shutter speeds.
For the rest of us, expect a little noise is part of the charm of nights shots.
This was f/4.5 at 1/30 of a second
Snow gives it that holiday feeling
