Shooting at Night

[Supasharpshooter]

Hi all,

Recently purshased the Nikon D7000 with the kit 18-105mm lense and the 50mm f1.8 lense.

Want to take some night shots and was just messing around with the camera in the backyard the other day and found that it had issues focusing. This makes sense. But if anyone has any tips on shooting at night i would love to hear them.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Congo1]

Hi all,

Recently purshased the Nikon D7000 with the kit 18-105mm lense and the 50mm f1.8 lense.

Want to take some night shots and was just messing around with the camera in the backyard the other day and found that it had issues focusing. This makes sense. But if anyone has any tips on shooting at night i would love to hear them.

Thanks in advance.

Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LEXAaBhk0M

 

[mnodonnell]

Two options come to mind:

1. Use the distance scale on the lens. Depending on what you are shooting you may be able to simply focus on infinity.

2. Set up the composition when it is still light outside and just leave the camera there until you want to take the shot. Just make you set the camera to manual focus mode before you leave.
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheesenpickles/

 

[LIL BUDDY]

Your other option is to use a flashlight (or handheld spot light) to illuminate an area to allow the auto focus to lock in focus on then switch to manual focus, leave focus distance alone and shoot using available light, open flash, etc. I use this method all the time with great success.

 

[Ron E Trees]

The flashlight works well. This photo was taken with a Sony a700, but a flashlight was used to set it up.

Ron



--
'The question is not what you look at, but what you see'. Henry David Thoreau
http://ront.smugmug.com/

 

[SNGX1327]

if you are not shooting near subjects, you can always use the moon, stars, or a light in a window off in the distance as a reference for infinity focus. so for instance if you are shooting landscapes by night, you can use the moon to AF. now you know you are focused at infinity. now you can shoot your far-off subjects.

for near subjects, this won't work.

i always thought some manufacturer should design a hot-shoe attachment that fired those red laser AF assist beams found on external flashes, without the flash. my old rig was a canon 20D with a 28mm USM lens and an external flash. when i used that flash, NOTHING was out of focus, and focus was near instant.

now i have a D90, 35 DX, and SB600. focus is very accurate, and much quicker than with the white-lamp AF assist, but it's still not as fast as that old canon!

but the problem is, you HAVE to use the flash in order to get those red criss cross AF assist patterns. on top of that, you can't even use the flash and not have the flash fire.

 

[Supasharpshooter]

Thank you all for your help.

So far i have found that trying to focus on a light or window at a similar range seems to work pretty good. Unfortunately the lens i'm using doesn't have distance markers. Maybe, i'll add my own...?

Cheers Folks