How To Take Pictures Of Wildlife At Night

Wildlife photography doesnt have to happen in exotic places.

How to take pictures of wildlife at night. Low Light Wildlife Photography Dont use Aperture Priority. This means the shutter speed is at least 10 seconds so if you were to hand-hold the camera the photo would certainly be blurry. It will attract a variety of wildlife that can be watched with the aid of a spotlight trained on the water source.

Set your motion detector sensor based on the game that you want to capture if you are using it for security then set it at high. In many lighting situations this will allow you to shoot with a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the motion of moving animals. Taking wildlife pictures at night requires proper equipment including a powerful zoom since you must stay relatively far away from the animals for your safety and theirs.

You may be surprised at what light in the night reveals. Use an exposure of at least 30 seconds and try f56 and ISO 800 to start. THE BLINK OF FIREFLIES in search of mates captures the magic of summer nights when campers and nocturnal wildlife share space under the stars.

A good rule of thumb for wildlife photography is to set the ISO in the mid-range somewhere around 400 800. One fun photography project to try is to shoot creative light spirals or spirograms. General game elephants rhinos etc will always be ignored as their eyesight is far too sensitive to our spotlights at night and too much exposure can cause night blindness which can obviously put an animal such as an antelope at a huge disadvantage.

Its probably the only photography channel Ive seen on YouTube dedicated entirely to wildlife. For more advanced night shots a tripod is necessary. Additionally you need to set your camera to take in as much light as possible and have the quickest shutter speed to catch the action.

Long exposure timesone 10 even 30 secondscombined with small apertures for great depth-of-field will produce dramatic light-trails and reveal details. If youre lucky enough to photograph a backlit animal at night you might have trouble focussing on it. Paul Hobson wildlife photographer.