Gardens, at night?

[Usernameuser]

So I have an interest in night time photography, so far my effotts havent been the best. Tonight I want to try and photograph my garden, its fairly large, cottage garden,lights all around it, any tips? My previous attempts were on a bridge camera and the lights usually flared and spoiled the photo, this attempt will be with a Canon 200D, so any tips will be most welcomed.

 

[Deleted member 49549]

May be with take a look at 'light painting'. If you have light sources pointed to the camera it will be difficult to take a single shot that will be nicely exposed. Perhaps turn on the garden lights for a short period and supplement them with light painting.

 

[BigJohn]

Turn off the lights, a steady tripod and remote release. Set camera to bulb for a long exposure turn the lights on for the last few seconds of the exposure. You'll have to experiment with the length of exposure dependent on ambient light.

Or

Take two shots one to expose for the lights
Turn the lights off then second shot to expose the garden. Merge the two in Photoshop and tweek as need.

 

[dwain1487]

I like Big Johns advice

 

[Byker28i]

You've got a contrast between large dark areas and very bright lights, which the camera can't capture that range. So it's either a composite of images, exposing for the lights, then for the dark areas and combining, or as mentioned, turn off the lights and use long exposure with light paining. You don't need much light, but it's also a good way to bring in stars etc.
This was a friends place, 30 sec exposure low iso to keep the noise down, then list with a tiny AAA pencil torch

 

[Kaltenberg Mike]

This shot was of some lights my wife had just hung in the wisteria; Olympus E-M1 Mk II, ISO 3200, f9, 1 s (hand-held). Probably aperture priority with the light meter set right down (-3 EV). THis is pretty much out of the camera with very minimal Android Lightroom tweaking - I don't even think that I cropped it.

 

[realspeed]

I've been playing around with a remote flashgun to see how plants can be lite. Only had a couple of goes so far so still in experimental stage

 

[scottishguy]

Could try taking photographs in the blue hour.

 

[Musicman]

I feel this thread needs some musical accompaniment