Extremes of Lighting

An important factor in night photography is how the lighting is portrayed in the scene. When portraying rows of street lighting for example, the direct light source itself is being photographed, therefore the lighting being exposed is very bright. An image of a floodlit building on the other hand is an image exposed by reflected light. This naturally is much weaker and would need a much longer exposure.

fig n.7 Direct and Reflected light

In many cases the two types of lighting would be portrayed in the same image, this would lead to extreme contrasts and very difficult exposure metering problems. In a case like this it is always best to expose for the reflected light and ignore any lighting that is portrayed in the image. Doing this will no doubt lead to overexposure of the light fixtures, but this can look quite acceptable in the image.

Fig n.7 was taken of an Irish pub would have been underexposed had the meter reading given be used. The strong floodlighting would have been the only detail in the image, leaving the rest of the image black. The photographer has decided that the stone detail is an important feature to capture.

An exposure of 8 seconds at f11 was used to record the light reflected off the building. Even though this exposure overexposed the floodlighting, it still doesn't take from the image.

Fig n.7 Olympus OM1, 28mm lens, 8 sec @ f11, Ilford FP4 film