Nighttime Photography

chelina7

I really want to learn to take nighttime storm photos as well as lightning shots. I need all the help I can get.

bruto

A lot of experimenting and variation is in order here, but one thing you absolutely must have is a good tripod.

It will also help to have a wireless remote control, because the D3200 can do true time exposures (i.e. shutter remains open as long as you want, with hands off) with the remote, which it cannot do without. It's under ten bucks in many places. Target stores even have a ten dollar universal that works.

You'll need to do this with manual exposure and manual control of ISO, because the camera's meter will tend to overexpose.

Lightning varies greatly, but I've had pretty good luck in the past on film with an ISO around 100, aperture around f/8, and time exposure. If a storm is really intense with cloud to ground lightning close by you might want to close the lens down to f/11 or more to avoid blowout, but the main trunk of lightning will generally always blow out anyway. You must focus on the sky (or infinity) manually. Keep your field fairly wide. Open the shutter and then wait until lightning flashes. A few good flashes can be very impressive on one frame. Then close the shutter. Increase ISO or open up aperture if lightning is too faint, or if you're after cloud to cloud flashes way over the hills, but most lightning will stand out nicely anyway. Try to find some foreground elements that will show up dramatically when the sky lights up behind them. Background hills can work well too. Just lightning in the sky may not really say much unless the clouds themselves are really interesting.

If you have no remote, you can also shoot up to 30 seconds at a time. Set your camera on self timer with a short delay. You'll have to re-set the self timer for every shot (not the case with remote). The built in shutter control will go for up to 30 seconds. If you get lightning, you get it. If you don't, you get a black frame that you erase later.

For overall nighttime storms you will likely want a bit more exposure than pure lightning shots. You'll still have to experiment a bit to decide what effect you want. The camera's meter thinks the average tone of a picture should be 18 percent gray, and will tend to overexpose a night shot. The black shadows will tend to be washed out and objects that glow will tend to have an aura or halo. For rendering nighttime it's unrealistic, but in the right circumstances can produce an eerie twilit or moon-lit tone that can be effective. I've seen some nice effects in urban settings.

Owing to the way digital signals work, a bright exposure is less noisy and grainy than a dark one. You can recover a dark area by cranking up the gain, but with it you crank up the noise. An area that's blown out (overexposed to white) cannot be recovered at all. But within a certain margin, dark shots can be made quieter by shooting them a couple of stops too bright in Raw mode, and then using an editor such as View NX2 to reduce the exposure by up to two stops. When you do this, it's like turning down the digital volume; you reduce not only the brightness but the noise.

Remember above all that this is a digital camera with a shutter that's rated to be good for something like 150 thousand clicks. Shoot, shoot, shoot, and then shoot some more. Try everything.

However, the other thing you need to remember is that the D3200, unlike some of its pricier cousins, is not very weatherproof. When you go out in those storms, make sure you don't get caught in a downpour!

chelina7

Thanks for your response. I will go out and get the wireless remote. Florida gets the most lightning in the world and I am ready to go out and capture some good shots. During the storm season (June - September) we can see up to 10,000 strikes out of one storm; it's awesome. The negative is FL rates #1 in lightning strike deaths; had one yesterday. I hope to get some soon. Safety first! Thanks.

bruto

I did make one mistake above: the meter does not give accurate long exposure readings, especially at high ISO. It does fine in a dimly lit room or a street scene, but not in the black of night. Whether it's because it can't distinguish very dark scenes or is reading its own noise, if you put the camera in A mode it probably will not go the full 30 seconds at a wide aperture. At high ISO and wide open it will go only a second or so even with the lens cap on.

So for reliable long shutter speeds you're best off with M or S.

chelina7

Thank you very much!