(7/31/2005)
- Andrew Malek
 
Night photos can take on a somewhat magical quality you may find lacking in normal daytime photography. Amazing night pictures certainly can attract attention. As the sun goes down, however, it becomes harder to capture images without the proper equipment and techniques. Thus, as was mentioned in Part I of this series, taking incredible nighttime photographs requires a lot of planning.
 
When your digital camera receives less light, it cannot absorb the surroundings as well in the resulting photographs. Some pictures may turn out too dark. Others can be too blurry. Your camera requires more time to absorb enough light to create an effective picture, so any shaking of the device will result in photographs lacking sharpness.
 
To compensate for the lack of lighting, here are several things you can do with most middle and high-end digital cameras to get the results you need. Part III of this series will continue with even more expert ideas.
 

* You may think that professional photographers take a large amount of time to set up a shot, perform complex calculations, talk about all sorts of topics such as f-stops, shoot one photograph that accurately represents their interpretation of a particular scene, and then leave.
 
While most of this may be true, the last part - only taking one photo - is far from it. Many, if not most, professional photographers commonly take a multitude of shots for every subject! Traditional photographers can go through rolls and rolls of film on a single shoot, and digital photographers may use gigabytes of memory.
 
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