Night photography has an attraction all its own. There's something about scintillating lights from office windows hanging in the dark of the night -- a modern version of the starry skies -- that appeal to us. Whether it's a city skyline, lamp posts on a dark and deserted street, or the front of your house all decked out with holiday lights, the challenge of capturing the mood of a night scene depends on whether your digital camera is capable of night photography and on a couple of simple techniques.
Knowing how your digital camera meters light is critical for achieving consistent and accurate exposures. Metering is the brains behind how your camera determines the shutter speed and aperture, based on lighting conditions and ISO speed. Metering options often include partial, evaluative zone or matrix, center-weighted and spot metering. Each of these have subject lighting conditions for which they excel-- and for which they fail. Understanding these can improve one's photographic intuition for how a camera measures light.
Dynamic range in photography describes the ratio between the maximum and minimum measurable light intensities (white and black, respectively). In the real world, one never encounters true white or black-- only varying degrees of light source intensity and subject reflectivity. Therefore the concept of dynamic range becomes more complicated, and depends on whether you are describing a capture device (such as a camera or scanner), a display device (such as a print or computer display), or the subject itself.
Ever wonder what it is that actually makes a camera work? This tutorial will cover the inner workings of a camera, and introduce you into photography basics and the expansive world of taking better photographs.
UV filters are supposed to block UV light. So, for the newcomers to photography let's first look at what UV light is and why you would want to block it.