Shooting at Twilight

by Jim Zuckerman

In my Eight Steps course at Betterphoto, one of the lessons is devoted to shooting at twilight. This is the most beautiful time of day to photograph cities and architecture. I distinguish between night photography, which is characterized by a black sky, and twilight, where the deep cobalt blue sky is a beautiful backdrop to the illuminated buildings.

Obviously, the light level is very low at twilight, and many students increase their ISO to 1600 or so and hand-hold their shots. This is not the right approach. With the higher ISO rating the quality of the image suffers. The additional noise that accompanies the ISO increase is unattractive, and the reduction in resolution in never desirable. The color and contrast are also affected, and the result is just not very pleasing.

If you are going to shoot at twilight, do it right. Use a tripod. It seems to me that there ‘s no sense in spending a lot of money on good camera equipment, expensive computer hardware and software, and photo instruction if you’re not going to take the time to get high quality, sharp pictures. Everyone agrees that tripods are a burden to carry and they slow you down when shooting. But in some situations they are essential, and twilight is one of those times when they will make or break the picture.

The two photos below were both taken at twilight: the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I used 100 ISO for both because of the superior quality, and a tripod gave me the luxury of using long exposure times due to the low light. If I find myself in a situation where I don’t have a tripod at twilight, I’ll rest my camera on my photo backpack or some other support that acts as a tripod, and I will still use the low ISO rating for maximum resolution.

Comments

[Amanda D. Austwick]

Hi JIm,
I'm going to take your lighting course in the fall, but I wanted to know from a seasoned photographer like you, do you think that film is better than digital when it comes to bring out color?
I've been thinking of going back to film for some great color shots, then scanning them in my computer to work on them if I need to.
Thanks,
Amanda Austwick

[Steve]

did you digitize the Petronus Towers?

[steve reffey]

Hi Jim I love reading your blogs. We are going back to Paris this month (after 4 times don't know if you can get enough) then back to Amsterdam again because your classes,instruction, and photos are so amzing. The tripod will be out!

[Jim Zuckerman]

Hi Amanda,

I'm sorry I didn't see your question until now. Both film and digital can have intense colors -- it all depends on how they are handled in Photoshop. If you compare film that never gets scanned with digital captures that can be manipulated in RAW and/or Photoshop, then the digital files will be much more saturated in color than film.

Jim