Xmas Love – How To Photograph Christmas Lights

Happy Holidays! Christmas lights are very tempting to us photographers, aren’t they? Unless you have a “Xmas Lights” setting on your digital point-and-shoot, how are you going to make a photo like this?

First of all, you need to find a photo-worthy scene. This image was shot in Love Park (in front of City Hall) in Philadelphia. The Robert Indiana “Love” sculpture is a favorite destination photo site for tourists. Each year when they put up the 50-foot decorated tree behind it, the whole scene bursts into life! That is, at night. During the day it’s kind of mediocre. So how to photograph it at night?

Night Shooting with a Digital Camera

Try a test shot with your camera in auto mode. You might get lucky. Chances are, though, you’ll get something that looks like one of these:

Photo on Left:

Too light. Camera’s auto exposure system set exposure for the scene’s average light intensity. This brings out shadow detail while burning out the highlights. How do you fix this? If you want to use the camera in auto mode, find the Ev or Av setting and drop it down to maybe -2 stops. Experiment with tricking the camera this way until you get the results you like.

Photo on Right:

Too light and blurred. Same problem with the Ev/Av setting, but in addition, the camera moved during the exposure. How do you fix this? Find something to brace the camera on. A tripod works best, a friend less so. The exposure will likely be long (half a second or more), regardless of what fancy mode you use. Why? Because there just isn’t enough light! Activate your anti-shake or vibration reduction as well, but this is of marginal use in such low light conditions.

Cameras operate on the principle of light hitting some sort of light-sensitive recording medium, be it film or a digital image sensor. Light is key to this process. The less light you have, the more difficult a time the camera will have recording an image. Any camera can take a great picture on a sunny day at the beach. Most need some help from the user when shooting in less than optimal conditions.

Here are some general pointers for shooting Christmas lights:

1. Set the camera’s light sensitivity as high as possible. In most cases, this will be ISO 400 for digital point-and-shoots, ISO 1600 for DSLRs. The DSLR has the advantage here–its image sensor is just much faster, and therefore more light sensitive. DSLR images will be sharper and less noisy.

2. Use a tripod or other solid object on which to brace the camera, as the exposure will likely be long. Most people can effectively hand hold a 50 mm lens at a shutter speed of about 1/50 second. Xmas light shutter speeds can be much slower than this! You risk blurring the image if you use a shutter speed less than 1/50 second. Image stabilization might allow you to hand hold the same shot at slower speeds, say 1/30 or even 1/15 of a second, but it in no way guarantees a sharp image!

3. Turn your flash off.

4. Crank your +/-Ev or Av setting down to -2 stops in order to record only the bright lights, and not the shadow detail of the scene. Bump it up a little if the image is too dark.

The super cool thing about digital cameras is the instant feedback you get! You can see immediately (in the playback viewfinder) whether or not you captured the image successfully. The trick is to know how to adjust your camera’s settings when necessary!

Category: Composition Tips, Featured, Photo of the Week, Tips for Beginners