Photography of the sea at night

[Yog]

Hi,
I'm planning to go on a cruise next month and wanted to ask, what is the best way for me to photograph the waves and the reflections in the ocean at night?
Please keep in mind that the photographs should be taken when the ship is the middle of the ocean so it will be very dark.

Thanks.

 

[vivalaveritas]

Long shutter speeds

 

[memento]

and a gyroscope.

 

[dandaluzphotography]

Longer shutter speeds on moving ship is not gonna work. Everything would be blurred out. I'm not what else you could aside from using some sort of flash but even that would only cover a small amount of space.

 

[OrionsByte]

Reflections of what? The moon? The stars? The light from the ship?

When light reflects off of water, it tends to be polarized, so in general you're going to lose about a stop of light. So if you're trying to take a picture of the reflection of the moon, for example, you could probably meter off the moon and then "overexpose" by a stop to catch the reflections. I doubt you'd able to see much else, though.

Other than that, you don't have a lot of options. Light is light, dark is dark. Taking photos from a ship in the dark is no different than taking pictures in a room in the dark - you have to use a long shutter speed, large aperture, and/or a high ISO. You haven't said what kind of camera you're bringing so you may not even have control over some of that.