Happy Christmas !!!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year and Merry Christmas is just knocking the door. So let’s play with lights, camera, a little bit of action and take a look at how to get the most effective Christmas photos.
Here are few quick and easy ways to photograph your Christmas tree lights:
- Turn off the lights – Light your Christmas tree and turn off all of the other lights in your room.
- Don’t use flash – Flash will lead to a blown out photo as it’ll overpower the twinkly lights on the Christmas tree. So, turn off that flash or if you’re using a mounted flash, point it up to the ceiling to help diffuse the light. Use the bounced light instead of directly flashing your subjects.
- Shoot in Manual mode – Change your focus to manual instead of auto to get more creative.
- Play with White Balance – Play with the WB settings until you find a color balance that suits your visual needs.
- Aperture – Set your aperture high(f22 or higher) so as to create the twinkling effect(starbursts) in Christmas lights. Play with different apertures to see which you like the best.
- ISO – Set ISO to a low setting, say 100 or 200 to yield crystal-clear and noise-free images. Experiment with different ISO settings in order to get the right amount of light in your image.
- Shutter speed – With low ISO and high aperture, you’ll need a really slow shutter speed in order to capture all the lights of your christmas tree.
- Use a tripod – As you’ll be using a slow shutter speed, you would need to use a tripod to keep your camera very still while you photograph your tree. You can use either the remote trigger/cable release or camera’s self-timer to make sure you minimize any possible camera shake from pressing the shutter.
Happy holidays and happy shooting 🙂
fStop 