For those wishing to know what settings to use to capture great night-time photographs here is a piece I recently distributed to members. These are particularly relevant to night photography in urban areas.

SETTINGS

I will give you what I consider to be the ideal settings for photography with and without a tripod.  These are however only my recommendations and I am aware that others may prefer to go a different way.   I apologise to those who already know how to take photos in these conditions, but the below will act as a user guide for those who have never practiced low light photography before.

In both cases it is best to shoot in RAW.

WITH TRIPOD

Using a tripod in these situations is by far the best way to capture clean and sharp images in my view,

But the first thing to remember when using a tripod is to turn off your image stabilisation on your lens, and for those using mirrorless cameras also within your camera.  Then set a minimum 2 second shutter release delay if your camera has this option.  This will allow the camera to settle after the shutter is depressed.

Put your camera into Aperture priority and set your aperture.  This will then leave your camera to set the shutter speed.  The aperture that you set is very much one for you and depends on the depth of field that you may want to achieve.  It is quite good to go to F16 or higher at times as this will introduce some spectacular starbursts from all the lights to your images. A word of warning though, this is just one technique and whilst effective can be overdone.

Set your camera to a low ISO.  I usually set this to the base ISO for a basic non moving photo.  But where aspects of the image are moving you may wish to increase your ISO setting to reduce the shutter speed to an acceptable level.  If there is movement on the water at night it may be necessary to ensure a shutter speed that is fast enough to freeze any movement of the boats.  This will most likely introduce some noise to your images but for those who use Lightroom to process their images the AI noise reduction tool is now extremely effective.

Focus using the auto camera focus, but in some cases the area will be too dark to allow this to happen effectively.  If this is the case then revert to manual focussing.

You may wish to experiment and to capture light trails.  These are fairly easily achieved but will just need you to set an aperture and ISO to achieve a shutter speed of at least 5 seconds.  There is no hard and fast rule on the length of time your shutter will need to remain open as each situation will be different.  You will just need to monitor the situation as it presents itself and then I usually end up obtaining the correct setting through trial and error.

WITHOUT A TRIPOD

Firstly ensure that your image stabilisation is on.

Then all settings are basically the same as above other than it will be necessary to set your ISO to its auto setting to allow the camera to set this itself.  I usually put this to a maximum of ISO 1600 but I am aware that some more modern cameras will capture decent images up to ISO 3200 and even higher in some cases.  But as is always the case a higher ISO will introduce some noise to the image.

Hand held photography in low light will limit options to taking images at a relatively fast shutter speed, which clearly isn't ideal for light trails of moving vehicles.

OTHER EQUIPMENT

When shooting in a totally dark environment it would be useful to have a headtorch to assist in seeing your camera and the environment around you. (Dont forget to turn this off when taking the shot though)

It may also be useful to have some other means of lighting up your subject so that you can do what is called "light painting". This is a technique used to light up a subject in a very dark area to help to enhance the subject in the image.

For cameras that dont allow long exposure times beyond 30 seconds it would also be beneficial to have access to a shutter release to allow you to extend your shutter speeds beyond this limit by setting your camera into BULB mode.

And possibly most important you should wear warm, waterproof clothing as inevitably the temperatures are often low.