Tip Portrait at night scene

[tecboy]

I'm planning to shoot portrait with a friend and her dog at night in the college campus. I'm trying to have the light poles in the background. Should I increase the iso up 1600 and the shutter speed 1/60. I'm worried the 1/60 may not be enough because I'll get soft images from the subjects especially her dog may moves her head.

 

[tirediron]

It's almost impossible to suggest what settings should be used without seeing the venue. That said, dogs and 1/60 don't often go well together.

 

[KmH]

People don't go well at 1/60 either.

I considered 1/100 the absolute slowest shutter speed I could use to shoot a stationary person.

A portrait looks better if there is a lighting ratio between the background and the subject.
Light from light poles is coming down at a very steep angle and will likely cause your friend to have dark eye sockets (raccoon eyes).

Light direction and quality are significant aspects of doing portrait photography.
Using lights you can control both the direction and quality of provide a way for you to determine where shadows are on your subject(s), a lighting ratio between subject and background, and the light quality (apparent light source size.)

 

[Derrel]

I used to shoot at night on my college campus, using ASA 64 Kodachrome slide film, at f/8, and typical exposures of 30 seconds in well-lighted areas, and as long as 2 mins and 30 seconds for dark areas that had no street lights or building lights. I would use a flash to illuminate people, with the exposure determined by how far away the person was from the flash, in relation to f/8 aperture value.

You could try a similar approach; it has the value of what KmH is talking about...the background is fairly dark, so it LOOKS LIKE night time, but the subjects who are close to the camera, have been lighted by a flash pop. One tip is to put the people in front of a DARK area--you do not want background lights in the area where you will have the people positioned. With a 30-second exposure time, you have plenty of time to work with, so the people can come in, and pose and then you can do a flash pop. If you want to, you can have them move over a bit, and receive a second flash exposure.

I would try this, the timed exposure for the scene,and then the woman and dog illuminated by a flash pop. One of the keys to shooting at night is being able to gauge exposure; shooting at f/8 makes that easier than jumping around between f/stops.