PC Help: How to take photos of Christmas lights

Q There are some very impressive Christmas lights near my house but I have never been able to do them justice when taking pictures with my digital camera. Are there any special settings needed for this?

George Ellis

Christmas lights can be very difficult to capture because they are very bright but the rest of the shot is very dark.

Depending on where in the scene the camera identifies the best settings, the picture will either be too bright (focusing on the black background) or too dark (focusing on the lights themselves).

Some experimentation is needed to get the best pictures but that is the beauty of digital cameras: shots that don’t work can be deleted. Some cameras may have a mode for night shots but be wary if the flash fires.

Camera flashes only have a very short range, not normally far enough for taking pictures of houses. As the camera will be expecting more light back from the flash the picture will probably be underexposed.

Most digital cameras have a manual mode that allows settings such as the shutter speed and aperture to be changed. To avoid complicated calculations to find the best combination of shutter speed and aperture, digital cameras also have priority modes. These allow the aperture to be set and the camera automatically sets up the shutter speed or vice versa.

As the shutter speed is likely to be low in these circumstances (open for longer to let in more light), one practical aid is to buy a tripod to help steady the camera. A cheap example is the Jessops Tripod TP320.

It is also worth choosing the time of day carefully. We appreciate Christmas lights when it is completely dark but this increases the contrast between the lights and background.

Try taking the photos at dusk when there is more background light, as recommended by Strobist. This may mean spending longer waiting around for the right conditions but can lead to better results.

On the camera itself set the ISO setting as low as possible to reduce any noise in the picture. The camera should be in Aperture priority mode. Set the F number (the name for aperture setting) as high as possible. The camera should also display the shutter speed.

It may also help to set the white balance mode to tungsten. This is normally simple to solve in photo-editing software but depends on a white or grey area to work properly.

One great advantage of digital cameras is that they record all the camera settings with the photo in an area known as Exif data. This information does not show up when the photo is printed but is a very useful reference of what works and what doesn’t.

There is a group dedicated to Christmas lights on the photo-sharing website Flickr and the camera settings can be seen by clicking on the More properties link on the left-hand side of the screen.

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