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General discussion

Quick question regarding night photography

Jun 12, 2005 11:56AM PDT

I want to get my father a a digital camera that takes really good night shots. He currently has a Cannon A60 and it takes terrible night shots, even when you increase the exposeure time. If somebody has a chance could you please offer some advice.

Thank you,

PS - I don't really want to spend more than $500 but if that is not realistic feel free to tell me so.

Discussion is locked

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The Canon 20D does very good night photography. It can
Jun 12, 2005 12:04PM PDT

go as high as 3200 ISO. I suspect the new Rebel XT has similar capability.

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Night Shots
Jun 12, 2005 1:42PM PDT

The Canon A70 should be capable of taking good night photos.

I assume you want to take a photo and have it look pretty much like your eyes see it.

You will have to use the Manual mode.
And you will need a tripod because you will be using some slow shutter speeds.

I think you can put that camera in aperture priority mode and adjust the aperture to 2.8 and then press the shutter button half way down and have it show you the shutter speed it has selected.

Lets assume that the camera selected 5 seconds.
The camera looks at low light differently than your eye. If there is one particulary bright light in the field of vision, the camera bases its decision on that bright light.

But go ahead and take that photo, and examine the results. If it is too dark overall, you need to switch to manual mode and set the aperture to 2.8 and the shutter speed to 10 seconds.

The camera will probably let you know in some manner that you have chosen unwisely. But ignore the cameras advice and take the photo.

Examine the results and it should be more like what you want. If you still want to capture more light, change the shutter speed to 15 seconds (the maximum for that camera). Take the photo and check the results.

If you decide you still need more light, then you need to change the ISO setting to one higher setting.
i.e. if it was 50 set it to 100, if it was 100 set it to 200, etc.

Then take another photo with the camera still set at 2.8 and 15 seconds.

As you can see, it is trial and error.

The finished product should look much like your eye sees it, but any bright lights in the field of vision will be shown in the photo as overly bright.

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