SHOOT THE CITY LIGHTS AT NIGHT

Canon pro Paul Groom shares his top tips and techniques for capturing illuminated buildings and light trails as night falls in Bristol

The pro started out by helping Paul set up his Canon R5 to shot night-time city shots

MANUAL MODE 

To control your aperture, shutter speed and ISO independently, you need to shoot in Manual mod. As pro Paul explains: “Manual mode means you can set both the aperture and shutter speed for an exposure of your city scenes to suit your eye, not what the camera thinks, so we could set a mid-range aperture and a shutter speed for good brightness levels in the shots. At dusk, we started at f/11 and 2 secs, but we soon had to start using much slower shutter speeds as it got darker.”

SHARPNESS SWEET SPOT 

Enthusiast Paul was used to using his widest aperture and longest lens for wildlife shots, to blur backgrounds behind subjects, but for city photography, he learned how he needed narrow apertures and wide lenses instead. Pro Paul said: “I explained to him that while your wide-angle lens might have a maximum narrow aperture of f/22, it’s better to shoot around f/11 for the sweet spot of sharpness across the whole frame. An aperture of f/11 or f/16 captures good depth of field so the whole scene is sharp, and also enables slower shutter speeds, ideal for blurring moving traffic into stunning light trails at night.”

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