Better Photos Tip #4 – No flash at night

When taking photographs at night, turn off the flash and take a long exposure to capture the lights.

When shooting a night time concert, sporting event or even the city lights you might think your camera's flash is a necessity. Unfortunately it's not only next to useless at a distance of over 2-3 metres but using it will force the camera to use a faster shutter speed than you need so all you'll get is a severely underexposed image.

Instead, disable the camera’s flash and switch the camera to night mode shooting so it will meter for the surrounding darkness and set a slow shutter speed allowing you to capture the detail in the scene.

A downside of the slow shutter speed is that any camera movement will result in the subject being severely blurred. When shooting at night without a flash, use a tripod or brace the camera so that it does not move.

On the flip side, when you take long exposures at night you can capture light trails from car headlights and taillights as they pass in front of you which can look really great.