Now is the time of year that is a favourite of many of my family friends. Driving around admiring the Christmas lights that our neighbors so painstakingly put up.
The question I hear the most is "How do I get the best shots of Christmas lights"
The best of time to photograph Christmas lights is just after sunset or just before sunrise. The reason I like to photograph at this time, is that I get detail around the lights, buildings, trees, landscape, etc.
When you choose to shoot at night all of this falls to black. There's just not enought light to illuminate the rest of the scene.
Another issue is that your camera will try to lighten the vast darkness to a light grey (18% grey) so your exposure will either be very grainy and/or look washed out and rather icky. (icky is a technical term in the Fotodog household :) )
Bring a tripod and cable release, and if your camera allows, select aperture priority. I like to shoot around f/16 or f/22. This will give a long enough exposure to ghost out people moving in front of your camera and a large depth of field to get the most of your scene in focus. By using a tripod you will be able to shoot with a lower ISO/Sensitivity. Setting your ISO between 320 and 640 will yield great results. I tend to shoot a bit lower on the scale (320) to get richer blacks and a bit more contrast.
Remember: with such a contrasty image, you may need to put in exposure adjustments or set your exposure manually. Check your preview and histogram to see where your highlights and shadows are appearing.
A really fun trick is to go to manual focus, zoom in as far as you can and manually focus until all the lights become a big blur. You'll get some great patterns to print out for scrapbooking or for fun graphic design projects. Try this with different focal lengths and various amounts of blur until you find the shapes and colours you're looking for.
I look forward to seeing your images!
Merry Christmas!
~fotodog
