Learn How To Take Night & Astro Photos
Learn how to use the manual settings. At night, using your camera’s Auto exposure mode risks an automatic boost to your ISO,
and auto-focusing your lens becomes significantly less effective.
Use a steady tripod and remote shutter release to ensure image sharpness in low light. Practice using them so you can set them up quickly and make rapid adjustments in the dark.
Learn sunrise and sunset times and the moon’s phase for your destination to make the most of picture opportunities related to these elements.
Arriving at your destination before dark will enable you to scout the area and set up your gear in daylight conditions, and will also allow you to gradually accustom your eyes to darkness.
Set your camera to record images in raw file format. This will allow you greater control in finessing contrast, color temperature, or white balance settings of your image files in post processing.
Check your histogram. Don’t trust the exposure displayed on your camera’s LCD. To ensure correct exposure, learn how to access and interpret the image histogram and blinking highlights.
Long Exposure Noise Reduction can be a good or bad. Good - it gives you a clean image straight out of the camera. Bad - When LENR is turned on most cameras will be inoperable during that process.
Take careful notes about your exposure settings while you are shooting so to better analyze your decision-making after downloading the images. Night photography presents many variables.