Night photos.

Nowadays, with the words colorful night photos, everyone immediately thinks of colorful advertisements of a big city. Naturally, that they tempt photographers, but generally they do not care to maintain proper conditions when handling colored ones, glowing spots. In addition, such photos result in many dark parts of the image, that go well with the colors. If the streets in the field of view of the camera are frequently driven by cars, it hardly bothers me at all, because the required exposure conditions are too poor and the vehicles are completely invisible due to the high speed. However, their lights appear as bright streaks in the image. These light paths should not be regarded as errors, because everyone, who ever viewed or criticized night photography, knows their origins. On the other hand, these light paths are something (guiding line into the picture. However, if we want to emphasize the night mood and solitude in a theme, we must close the lens during the passage of any vehicles and extend the exposure time accordingly.

The term "exposure time" is very dangerous, because photoelectric light meters are useless for night photography. Only the experience gained from taking this kind of pictures, at different exposure times, can help us solve the difficulties. Happily, that underexposure or overexposure in night photos are not as critical as in normal photos.

Approximately roughly can be considered, that for street photos with a lot of light, the exposure time should be between 2 a 30 sek., at the aperture 4. Completely different conditions can be found on the streets of the suburbs, on which the light of one can often be used, the only lighthouse. In these cases, we need to leave the lens open for a few minutes longer.

The reflections of lights from puddles or wet asphalt come out very nicely, reviving the usually dead foregrounds. So as not to get a pitch black sky, it is advantageous to take pictures in the last glow of dusk. Then we get a slightly subdued or dark blue sky. As the photographic material, the material adapted to daylight, type T, is most often used. This applies primarily to colorful illuminated advertisements as well as motifs illuminated by street lamps. We can then get a moody yellowish light. Materials for artificial light, type K, we naturally use then, if you want to take pictures of exhibitions or other decorations lit by incandescent lamps, or if you want to take pictures of street scenes with people walking. We also use the material adapted to artificial light when shooting rockets and fireworks, which belong to typical night photos. The white rockets will then not have a yellowish tint. Rockets and fireworks can be photographed very simply: if we point the camera set on a tripod in the right direction and we will expose for so long, until a few - not too many - rockets show us their beauty. If they are well placed in the image, we can say, that we were lucky.