Tip for Shooting at Night (Long Exposure Noise)

If you’re shooting at night, your shutter is going to wind up staying open long enough for you to make a good exposure, and depending on how dark it is where you’re shooting, it could open for 1/4 of a second, 4 seconds, or 40 seconds. If you start to have long exposures, like 40 seconds, chances are you’re going to start to get some serious noise in your photo (even if you were shooting at ISO 100). One thing you can do to help is to turn on your camera’s Long Exposure Noise Reduction feature (both Nikon and Canon DSLRs have this feature). This kicks in your camera’s built-in noise reduction to combat the kind of noise that shows up in long exposures like these, and they actually do a surprisingly decent job, so they’re worth turning on (just in these long exposure instances—this is not for everyday use).