After a decent camera, capable of night shots?

[Contract Killer]

Ive only ever used iPhone/cheap digital cameras, which are more than good enough for most day shots, but are absolutely awful at night shots.

Im off to the USA for 3 weeks in January and would like a decent camera this time.

I understand I need a SLR? I know absolutely nothing about cameras really.

Not sure I really want to spend much more than £400.

So anyone got any recommendations? or am I being too ambitious at getting good night shots in my budget?

(Plus in always feel deeply inadaquate with my cheap digital camera, while a bus load of Chinese tourists jump off a bus all with their fancy cameras!)


Cheers

[henrycrun]

Will you have enough time, patience and space to use a tripod ?

[Contract Killer]

Thanks, yes mostly static objects/cities in the evenings with all the lights. (For example NY on New Years eve).

No, I won't be dedicated enough to use a stand!


Would something like this do the job?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07BR5VKD3/?coliid=I3K...

[anonymous-user]

Frankly, no it wouldn't do the job. If you're shooting handheld at night then unless it's a very well lit area you're going to have a huge amount of noise, and very little detail, almost none in the shadows. A camera like that doesn't have anywhere near the high-ISO performance that you'd absolutely need shooting handheld.

Any camera with sufficient exposure control can capture good night images, but you need a tripod and a good knowledge/experience base of how to use the camera.

Edited by anonymous-user on Saturday 1st December 17:50

[Contract Killer]

Thanks, having done a bit of reading, I now see that the higher the ISO the less time it takes to take the picture (in basic terms).

And that canon was only 100-6400.

Would something like this with a ISO of 100-25600 give me a much better chance?

https://www.jessops.com/p/nikon/d3500-digital-slr-...

Or the Sony:
https://www.jessops.com/p/sony/a68-digital-slr-bod...

Edited by Contract Killer on Saturday 1st December 19:28

[singlecoil]

Those will take better pictures than you could get with a phone. But there's a reason why better cameras cost more money. Have a look at some YouTube videos covering those cameras (and others) and see what the consensus is.

[damianmkv]

I'd go for a Sony rx100 mk2 or mk3. I have the mk2 and my wife took it to New York ( excuse the other shots in the album but you'll get an idea of iso6400 on it )

https://www.flickr.com/photos/59954848@N07/albums/...

Edited by damianmkv on Sunday 2nd December 11:03

[Tony1963]

OP,

A few problems here.

You say “decent camera”, then “£400”. The two don’t go together really. £400 on a dSLR is strictly entry level.

Even a £3k camera with a £1k lens will be of little help if you don’t know how to use it properly.

Three weeks? How many night shots do you honestly think you’ll take? I’d be enjoying myself, not bothering with more than a handful of night shots. That’s a lot of money per shot, especially as they probably won’t be worth looking at when you get home.

I’d be looking at a used compact, and see how it goes. You can easily sell it once you return, if it doesn’t work out.

[GetCarter]

damianmkv said:

I'd go for a Sony rx100 mk2 or mk3. I have the mk2 and my wife took it to New York ( excuse the other shots in the album but you'll get an idea of iso6400 on it )

https://www.flickr.com/photos/59954848@N07/albums/...

Edited by damianmkv on Sunday 2nd December 11:03

I'd agree with this... and as for tripods, there are plenty of places in a city where you can sit or wedge a camera enabling 'steady' shots.

This will give an idea of how good it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKub_uN3EUc

[Tony1963]

Take an empty bean bag, fill it when you arrive. They’re a great support for cameras, and far less cumbersome than a tripod.

[satans worm]

Not sure I’d bother at all.
Night photography really does need a tripod or all you will get is a grainy image , probably blurred still.
If you do insist on taking them then do not use your flash what ever you do as this will only light up 6 ft in front of you at best, the rest will be black.
If you want a decent shot of the ny skyline then hop on the NY waterway ferry to Port Imperial , walk south until you see some steps on your right and climb the bank to get to the top, from there you can grab the best skyline shot of nyc, see below
20160806-_MG_4850 by justin bowdidge, on Flickr

20161104-_MG_5838 by justin bowdidge, on Flickr


The bean bag idea is also a good one, bring it filled as it weighs nothing and I don’t know how you would fill it in NYC, it will be very useful for the empire views which is what I did below, resting it on the building.

untitled-6359 by justin bowdidge, on Flickr

untitled-6425 by justin bowdidge, on Flickr

Finally Brooklyn bridge park is also a good area to shoot

_MG_2790-12 by justin bowdidge, on Flickr

The main reason I wold say not to bother and stick to your phone is that USD400 IS a lot of money for some photo you can buy on line done professionally for peanuts, and you don’t have to arse around with it while your out having fun!

Use the cash and upgrade to the latest iPhone instead, that way you get something for after the trip, and buy the iPhone in nyc, it will be cheaper than England !

Edited by satans worm on Sunday 2nd December 13:34

[Tony1963]

^ Yep

[Turbojuice]

I would also not bother. 3 weeks is far too little time to pick up a dslr and learn how to take difficult night shots. I'd say enjoy your trip and buy one afterwards and spend a lot of time learning and playing around with it ready for your next trip.

Another thing is the cameras you have linked are entry level models with entry level lenses bundled in. To be honest they will not do what you want them to do and you will waste 400 big ones. Have a look at getting used gear, you get so much more for your money.

I started out not long ago in this hobby and brought used gear based off of recommendations here. Got all my gear from mpb.com and i'm super happy with it. All the gear was as described (if not better), saved me a lot of cash whilst giving me much better gear compared to brand new kit.

[checkmate91]

A night shot taken on a natural tripod (the ground)

Approx ten times your budget OP, 4 seconds at f11 (admittedly ISO 100 to get the clean, no-noise look) but the original image (this is a bit compressed by Flickr/Thumbsnap) will print on a huge canvas if I or Network Rail hehe) ever wanted to do that. During the same shoot I took iphone pics of similar scenes to share with friends in the there and then and for small screen viewing they were good enough.

Whichever way you decide to go, you've got the whole of December to practice on local town/city Christmas lights with a particular focus on holding camera/phone as still as poss during exposure.

Edited by checkmate91 on Sunday 2nd December 16:52

Edited by checkmate91 on Sunday 2nd December 17:02

[Dr Jekyll]

I asked a very keen amateur I know about this, he was planning to go out and photograph some Christmas lights. The gist was he'd like a Leica M10, he'd settle for a Canon 5D, but a Nikon 5500 would do the job. All a bit more than you want to spend though and he reckons a Nikon 3500 isn't really up to it. He uses a Nikon 7200 but not primarily for night shots.

[Escapegoat]

checkmate91 said:

Whichever way you decide to go, you've got the whole of December to practice on local town/city Christmas lights with a particular focus on holding camera/phone as still as poss during exposure.

This.

In life, you will miss 100% of the chances that you don't take. Photography is no exception. The people here saying "don't bother" are missing the point. (Quite common when the inner nerd gets more interested in the technology than the technique.)

I'd not bother with a DSLR (I have one and long ago decided that schlepping it around with me hampers a holiday). The RX100 ii is available cheap and will definitely do the job, once you've spent some time getting familiar and - as checkmate91 says - making and learning from some mistakes before you go. (Mine was used for £230 with a few extras.) The downside on that camera is a very modest zoom, but unless you go to a mirrorless and add some extra lenses, that's par for the course.

A sandbag for steadying the camera on long exposures is a good idea. And the RX100 is small and light enough to not overbalance those small pocket tripods that you can find on Ebay for £5 or so. I used one that came with a little MP3 field recorder I bought. Set it up and use the 2-second self timer to set off the shutter so that there's no camera shake.

[Gad-Westy]

Dr Jekyll said:

I asked a very keen amateur I know about this, he was planning to go out and photograph some Christmas lights. The gist was he'd like a Leica M10, he'd settle for a Canon 5D, but a Nikon 5500 would do the job. All a bit more than you want to spend though and he reckons a Nikon 3500 isn't really up to it. He uses a Nikon 7200 but not primarily for night shots.

This seems odd advice. Nice as Leicas are, I cannot think of anything that makes them particularly useful for night photography above anything else. And a D3500 and D5500 use exactly the same sensor as each other and indeed as the D7200 so if one works well, they all will.

Basically for shooting nightime landscape type shots there are really only 3 approaches.

1. Handheld, wide aperture and high ISO. You're dealing with very low light so the more light you can suck in the better. That is where big sensors and big aperture lenses come in. They're sucking in more light for every unit of time vs smaller sensors or smaller apertures so you see less noise and cleaner images. Modern full frame cameras are so good at high ISO now and there are so many good wide aperture, wide angle lenses now that you can just about pull this approach off but not for £400.

2. Tripod with long exposure. Just about any camera can do this, even phones. You just need to keep the camera still, keep the ISO low (for clean images), pick an aperture that is going to suit the lens and give you good depth of field, f/8 will do if in doubt and let the camera expose for as long as it needs. 30 seconds is perfectly normal, maybe even longer. Cover the view finder if you're using a DSLR. This method will give great results (with a little practice) but you need a tripod but on the plus side you don't need to spend much on a camera to do this well. Frankly an old old £100 DSLR with a £50 kit lens can do this very well indeed.

3. Not sure anybodies mentioned this yet, but we can cheat these days. Some cameras and lenses have such capable image stabilisation systems now that you can shoot night photography handheld at base ISO. I'm not sure what else is out there in budget but you can buy Olympus OMD cameras from £300 upwards that will allow you to hold a handheld shot for as long as 2 seconds with a little care and ideally leaning your weight on something. Combined with a reasonably fast prime lens (panasonic 14mm f/2.5 would do and costs about £100 used) you can get genuinely startling results and not a tripod in sight. Only downside really is that you'd get better results with option 2 but if you don't want to use a tripod, this option is a good one.

[bazza white]

Gad-Westy said:

3. Not sure anybodies mentioned this yet, but we can cheat these days. Some cameras and lenses have such capable image stabilisation systems now that you can shoot night photography handheld at base ISO. I'm not sure what else is out there in budget but you can buy Olympus OMD cameras from £300 upwards that will allow you to hold a handheld shot for as long as 2 seconds with a little care and ideally leaning your weight on something. Combined with a reasonably fast prime lens (panasonic 14mm f/2.5 would do and costs about £100 used) you can get genuinely startling results and not a tripod in sight. Only downside really is that you'd get better results with option 2 but if you don't want to use a tripod, this option is a good one.

Same as my gx80/gx85, ibis and lense stabilisation is pretty nifty. Pretty good price at the moment but ive not done many night shots yet to advise.

[Porsche911R]

I use an Canon M6 and never use the £6k of kit in the spare room :-(

M6 plus gorillapod for the win imo. small & light I have it paired with a 22mm F2 on it.

amazing in low light, all a non pro needs, as we only look at stuff on VDU these days, but night and day over an iPhone.

Non pro's look nobbers with SLR's and big lens's lol imho...…….

Edited by Porsche911R on Tuesday 11th December 11:47

[Fallingup]

Gad-Westy said:

This seems odd advice. Nice as Leicas are, I cannot think of anything that makes them particularly useful for night photography above anything else. And a D3500 and D5500 use exactly the same sensor as each other and indeed as the D7200 so if one works well, they all will.

Basically for shooting nightime landscape type shots there are really only 3 approaches.

1. Handheld, wide aperture and high ISO. You're dealing with very low light so the more light you can suck in the better. That is where big sensors and big aperture lenses come in. They're sucking in more light for every unit of time vs smaller sensors or smaller apertures so you see less noise and cleaner images. Modern full frame cameras are so good at high ISO now and there are so many good wide aperture, wide angle lenses now that you can just about pull this approach off but not for £400.

2. Tripod with long exposure. Just about any camera can do this, even phones. You just need to keep the camera still, keep the ISO low (for clean images), pick an aperture that is going to suit the lens and give you good depth of field, f/8 will do if in doubt and let the camera expose for as long as it needs. 30 seconds is perfectly normal, maybe even longer. Cover the view finder if you're using a DSLR. This method will give great results (with a little practice) but you need a tripod but on the plus side you don't need to spend much on a camera to do this well. Frankly an old old £100 DSLR with a £50 kit lens can do this very well indeed.

3. Not sure anybodies mentioned this yet, but we can cheat these days. Some cameras and lenses have such capable image stabilisation systems now that you can shoot night photography handheld at base ISO. I'm not sure what else is out there in budget but you can buy Olympus OMD cameras from £300 upwards that will allow you to hold a handheld shot for as long as 2 seconds with a little care and ideally leaning your weight on something. Combined with a reasonably fast prime lens (panasonic 14mm f/2.5 would do and costs about £100 used) you can get genuinely startling results and not a tripod in sight. Only downside really is that you'd get better results with option 2 but if you don't want to use a tripod, this option is a good one.

Quick question. In point two you say cover the view finder on a dslr. Why?