Night photography settings your camera wants you to use

Control your colours

Fine tune your white balance for better hues

With your camera set to automatic white balance, night photos will tend to look rather blue.

[caption id="attachment_542220" align="aligncenter" width="427" caption="Auto White Balance"]

Night photography settings: control your colours

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This is because, even though our eyes are only seeing a world in monochrome, the camera is still being presented with a blue sky.

By shooting raw files, it's possible to fix this problem at the processing stage. Simply choose a warmer white balance - somewhere around 5000K should suffice - and the picture should better resemble how you saw the night scene.

[caption id="attachment_542221" align="aligncenter" width="427" caption="Warmer White Balance"]

Night photography settings: control your colours with warmer white balance settings

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Make sure your white balance isn't pushed up too far though. If it is, the ground will start to look unpleasantly yellow or brown, which can end up being worse than an overly blue image.

PAGE 1: Options for night photography settings
PAGE 2: 3 key night photography settings every photographer should use
PAGE 3: Control your colours
PAGE 4: Final tips for your night photography shoot

READ MORE

What is white balance: common problems and how to solve them
49 awesome photography tips and time savers

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