How to take photos at night (that aren’t blurry)

Have you ever tried to take a photo at night, outside, and it came out terribly? Perhaps you were on vacation and saw a postcard of cars whizzing by the Eiffel Tower, streams of light from the headlights in the foreground and the beautiful monument in the background. But when you tried to replicate the image, it was a far cry from what you envisioned.

There’s a reason for this. Night photography follows the same rules as any other photograph. That is, when an image is not taken using the general principles of photography, errors occur. Photography literally means, writing with light. If you don’t have enough light, or you don’t take the available light that you do have into account, you’re going to end up with rubbish photographs.

Here’s how to take great photos at night. Obviously, like with anything in photography, this is subject to various techniques. My technique for getting the shot may be different than others.

1. Use a Tripod. I cannot stress this enough. In fact, as your photography skills grow, you will find that it is almost impossible to live without a tripod.
2. Learn the manual settingson your camera. Know what shutter speed and aperture have to do with it. I’ve written an article on that also.
3. Use a shutter release cable. These can be purchased at almost any good camera store. This will help with the camera vibration. It’s a small cord that can be attached to your camera, which allows you to take your finger off of the shutter release button, dampening vibration. Wireless remotes or the camera’s built in timer are other options.
4. Use the mirror lockup function. DSLRs have a mirror, which, when you look through the viewfinder, reflects the image from the lens, so you can see what the lens is seeing. This causes vibration in the camera and can lead to blurry photos. Mirror lockup reduces camera vibration.

Photo by Sudheer G; ISO 100, f/8.0, 40-second exposure.

Okay, you have all the ingredients to make a great photo at night. Here’s how to put them all together:

Using your tripod, set up the shot which you think is pleasing to the eye. Set your camera to manual and set your mirror lockup function.

Use your in-camera light meter to determine what the best exposure will be. For instance, if you’re using an aperture of /f11 and an ISO of 100, you might get a reading of 2 seconds, or more. Here is where it gets interesting; the slower your shutter speed, the more action you’re going to record. Meaning, if you have a shutter speed of 10 seconds and within those 10 seconds 35 cars speed by your image, in your foreground, you’re going to capture a lot of streaming lights. This is quite a nice effect in night photography. The shutter speed and aperture will work together to give you the sort of image you’re looking for. Maybe you don’t care about streaming lights, then don’t worry about having super long shutter speeds.

One thing to make a note of is that the aperture really doesn’t matter here. Anything above, say, f/5.6 is fine for night photos. You’re not too concerned with capturing depth of field in the foreground and background. This is especially true for cityscapes. I have shot at f/2.8 at times and had very similar results as f/11, because everything I’m shooting is so far away. My lens is focused at infinity to be exact.

Also, ISO speeds of 100 or 200 are fine here. In fact, they’re preferable. Remember, we’re not trying to stop the action. We’re trying to capture it in the time frame of our shutter speed.

Photo by Matt Gibson; ISO 100, f/11.0, 30-second exposure.

It’s really no more complicated than that. Think about the effect you want to create; long shutter speeds to capture the foreground and background movement and making sure your camera is steady and that there are no vibrations, which could blur your image.

That’s how I do it, anyway.

About the Author:
This article was written by Taylor Young Photography. “Whether I am shooting weddings, portraits, landscapes, architecture, interiors, or food for a restaurant, I constantly strive for perfection in order to ensure that my clients stand out and look their very best.”

I think every photographer who has just got a reflex camera in their hands asks how to photograph at night, how to get beautiful photographs of the city. After spending several nights in different parts of the world, I learned how to create beautiful night photos of the sky, city, night landscape, but first things first.

Of course, to get photos of a city at night or other objects of photography, you need practice, without it anywhere. When I was completely absorbed by the world of photography, I read a lot of theory on how to properly photograph at night, but only practice and experimenting with the settings of the DSLR helped me.

The most important point for getting a beautiful night photo is the lens, I already wrote on how to choose a lens on my blog, you can also read about camera settings and how to make the right choice of a camera when buying in a store and hand-held.

By the way, if you have already wondered how to photograph a starry sky or make a time-lapse (a video from the footage), then you can read about this, I already wrote about this method of night photography in a separate article.

How to take pictures at night correctly – a few rules

To get beautiful photographs of a city at night or a night landscape, you need to understand a few rules of how to properly photograph at night:

• Set the ISO value in the settings of your camera to no more than 1600, on some older models it is possible and even less, if you do not go beyond the ISO, then there will be a minimum of noise in a night photo.
• The shutter speed when shooting a city at night should be between 1/30 sec and 1/50 sec.
• A fast lens is required, the lens aperture for night shooting should be from F1.2 to F11 maximum.
• Read my article on camera settings and make changes to picture styles in the contrast menu, keep it minimal. You will benefit from this setting because the image will not be dark.
• Look for night photography spots that are more illuminated by lanterns or other light sources.

In order to photograph at night, you need to be guided by the rules that I described and half of the success is already guaranteed to you when photographing at night, but there are other sides to the question of how to photograph correctly at night, we go further.

Practice of photographing at night, we take photographs of the night city on our own

Using the example of a photograph of a night city taken late in the evening, I will show what settings were used so that it was a little clearer for you and you knew what to focus on, because when everything is shown clearly, it is absorbed faster.

The photo was taken in the evening with the aperture set to 3.5. The ISO is set to 640 and the shutter speed is 1/30 second. If you set the same settings, then the approximate photo of the river will turn out properly, let's go further.

The longer the shutter speed when shooting at night, the more light will enter the matrix, which means the photo will be brighter, but you need to take into account the sharpness, which is important when shooting a city at night.

How to photograph at night and sharpen it correctly

If a night subject is well lit by lanterns, then boldly set the aperture to F5.6 – F8 and no more, otherwise we will lose it in the light.

And of course, all night photography is usually done at long exposures, which means that without a tripod you will not succeed. The most important thing is to position the tripod so that it stands rooted to the spot, especially in the snow.

Usually when you set the tripod on snow or loose ground, the warm legs start to fall through, let the tripod sit in place and get a solid base.

Do not forget to use a tricky setting when shooting with a tripod – the shutter delay timer. It is needed so that when you press the shutter button, the camera moves and a blurry night photo is provided to you.

During the time when the timer will keep a record, the camera will stop wobbling and the photo will not only turn out to be not blurry, but also sharp! There are also wireless shutter releases – remotes, but my method completely makes night photography acceptable without a remote control.

If a tripod is not at hand, any good base can serve as a tripod, look around, I think you will find a reliable surface from which to photograph at night.

Another method, which replaces a tripod in the situation you need, take a thick thread and attach a bolt (select the bolt to the size) with a tied thread on the bottom of the camera in the tripod socket. If the bolt is not found, then tie a knot on the camera lens. You step on the other end of the thread with your foot and pull, you get a tripod with which you can also win as a picture, but not a long exposure, up to a maximum of 1 second.

Making artistic night photography or photography secrets at night

• In order to get a trail from cars when photographing at night, we increase the shutter speed from 5 seconds, the best option to get a trail from moving light objects is 15 seconds.

• In order for the lights in a night photo to look like stars with rays, you need to close the aperture to 11, but this should be carried away with large light sources, when there are many lights.

Well, I told you how to take pictures at night, now you have many hours of practice in the fresh air and then you will take photographs of the night city from which everyone will tell you – “you have a beautiful photo”.

“My pictures keep turning out blurry and it’s so frustrating!” Hands down, this is the most common struggle we hear from our students and we get it. When we were first starting out, the same issue stumped us. So let’s talk about some simple but effective ways to get those pictures looking the way you want.

Why Are My Pictures Blurry?

Let’s start with the hard truth: it might be you. We totally understand getting frustrated with your gear and feeling Hulk level rage when it won’t work the way you want. Let’s just say we’re grateful no one was filming us as we first started our photography journeys. This is such a simple fix that it feels silly but nobody’s got time for a tech meltdown so let’s break it down.

How you hold your camera matters because your camera is going to pick up every bit of movement. Depending on how much light is in your scene and what mode you’re shooting in, something as simple as your breath can result in a blurry photo.

With your feet planted firmly on the ground, bring your elbows into your abdomen. The goal here is to use your body to brace your camera and create a tripod with your arms and trunk. Sounds simple, right? You’d be AMAZED at what a difference this makes at stabilizing your camera so it can take a clear picture.

Obviously, you aren’t always able to stand in perfect position, so what then? Find something to brace yourself on; whether a wall, a rock, or even your knees if you’re in a squatting position. And make sure you’ve got a second shooter to capture your contortionist moves so we can enjoy your resourcefulness haha! You wouldn’t believe some of the positions we’ve invented just to get the shot!

Sometimes, there’s just no way to brace yourself. Maybe you’re on your tippy toes and taking an overhead shot. Or you’re reaching to get just the right angle. In this instance, you can still try to stabilize yourself by taking a big breath in and then clicking your shutter button as you breathe out slowly. Holding your breath creates a lot of tension in your body, while releasing it will allow you to reduce some of that motion.

Why Does My Camera Take Blurry Pictures?

Even when you brace yourself and hold still as a statue, sometimes your photos are still blurry. This is where we need to assess a couple things and adjust accordingly.

First, if you’re photographing a scene with low light, your camera is going to have to work harder to get enough light to properly expose your photo. The harder it works, the longer it takes. This translates to your shutter being open longer so even small movements will be recorded as a blur. Think of those old fashion pictures where a face looks slightly blurry and the rest of the scene is in focus. They moved while the shutter was open and it recorded that movement.

In this case, you’ll want to add more light to your scene. You can do this by popping your flash, moving from shade to sunlight, getting closer to a window, or bouncing light with a reflector. The word photography means “to paint with light” and if we don’t have enough, the “painting” isn’t going to turn out the way we want.

Another reason your camera may take blurry photos is that you’re photographing a moving subject. Insert wiggly kids or fast running pets here. They seem to have an endless store of energy and just NEVER STOP MOVING. In this case, we need the camera to freeze their motion since it’s unlikely we’ll be able to persuade them to pause even for a second.

How to Make Blurry Pictures Clear

We truly believe your settings don’t matter so much as your composition; you can shoot in manual mode or automatic and still make a beautiful photo. But when it comes to blurry photos, we do need to take some control of those elusive settings. This doesn’t mean you have to switch your camera to “M” and expertly balance the exposure triangle. With a little direction from you, your camera can make those technical decisions and you’ll get the picture you’re after.

If the blur is really bad or the scene you’re trying to capture has a lot of movement, your shutter speed is going to take priority. This means you want your camera to work as fast as possible to take the picture. The faster it does this, the faster it will open and close the shutter. To prioritize shutter speed, you have a couple options.

The first is to switch your camera to Sports Mode. You’ll see a dial at the top of your camera with some icons; Sports mode is the running figure. When you select this mode, you’re telling your camera to take the picture quickly but you don’t have to worry about the specifics of that command. Your camera will make all the decisions on how to do that while you concentrate on tracking those wiggly kids or fast moving pets.

The other option is to switch to S mode. This is one of the creative modes on your camera and we think of it as the sweet spot between automatic and full blown manual mode. S mode stands for Shutter Priority. When you spin your dial to S, you are in charge of setting your shutter speed. The faster your subject, the higher you’ll want that shutter speed to be. Your camera will then determine what your aperture and ISO need to be (the other two elements of the exposure triangle).

And of course, you can switch to Manual mode. In this case, you’ll be choosing ISO, aperture, and shutter speed to create a properly exposed photo. These are not hard and fast rules but they’re a good place to start when taking control of your shutter speed:

For handheld photos (meaning you’re not using a tripod), keep your shutter speed above 1/125.

For moving subjects, don’t let your shutter speed go below 1/500. This ensures your camera is working quickly enough to freeze that motion.

If you DO want to show some motion blur, bringing your shutter speed to 1/60 or lower should do that. You may want to rest your camera on a sturdy surface or use a tripod, though, so you don’t capture camera shake.

Can a Blurry Photo be Fixed?

In a word: no. Your best bet is to get the subject in focus (or crisp) when you take the photo. That’s why we recommend using Sports Mode, switching to Shutter Priority or cranking up that shutter speed. There’s not a ton that can be done to fix a blurry photo.

If the blur is only minor, you can sometimes use the sharpening tool in Lightroom or Photoshop. However, if you push this too far, it can give your photo a very fake feel so that’s why we recommend taking control of your camera while shooting. It will save you lots of headaches later on!

If you found these tips helpful, you may want to check out our online workshop, The Camera Course Essentials. We cover everything you need to know about how to make and take a beautiful picture, plus a ton of other practical info. You can pop your name below and we’ll let you know when seats open again!

‎05-25-2021 04:48 PM (Last edited ‎05-25-2021 04:54 PM ) in

Regardless of your level of expertise in smartphone photography, one of the most challenging times to shoot photos is at night. But with our Galaxy devices, you can flex the features of your camera to take a variety of creative shots in the dark.

Here are some of the features and modes available on our devices which you can use for the ultimate night photography outing.

Stability is key

Before looking at the different features on your Galaxy camera, it is important that your device is steady when taking photos at night as movement can make your image blurry. We would recommend investing in a simple tripod to stabilise your phone, or prop the phone against a sturdy surface to minimise image blurring.

Comparison of photo shot with default camera settings (left), and with Night Mode(right)

(Images taken on Samsung Galaxy A52)

Using multi-frame processing, Night Mode * combines several images to help produce one clear photo in low light setting. You can capture amazing night shots without having to edit the image – simply snap a picture and let your phone do the processing for you.

All you need to do to use this setting is head into your camera and swipe to the Night Mode to capture quality night shots. Click here for a detailed guide on how to take photos with Night Mode.

Outdoors, Night Mode (right) also works to help make shots more clear and vivid.

(Images taken on Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G. Left: Default camera, Right: Night Mode)

Testing settings while using Pro Mode

(Image taken on Samsung Galaxy Note 20)

Once you’re more confident taking photos in low light areas, you can take your night photography to the next level by using Pro Mode *. Pro Mode gives you control over individual settings such as ISO, shutter speed and aperture, which affect light levels in your photo or video.

Practice and familiarise yourself with Pro Mode settings by taking the same photo with different values for each setting to find what works for you. Some key settings for night photography in Pro Mode are:

• Shutter speed: This determines how long the camera spends taking the photo and are measured in fractions of a second. When light levels are low, pick a slower shutter speed to let the camera sensor capture more light.
• ISO: This determines the camera’s sensitivity to light. Pick a higher ISO value (upwards of ISO 400) for better image clarity when there is very little light. This increases the camera’s sensitivity, allowing the right exposure to be achieved with less light.
• Exposure: Changing the exposure value will determine how much light the camera’s sensor receives. For low-light situations such as at night, it is best to use a higher exposure.

Click the guide here to learn more about using Pro Mode on your Galaxy device.

Once you’re familiar with Pro Mode, you can get even more creative with night photography. Here are some ways to get artistic in your shots:

Use Pro mode to create an Amazing Light Show

If you want to create a cool, abstract camera effect, you can do this using some lights. Look for areas that have some form of light, such as street lamps or car headlights, which can provide contrast against the darkness. Then, switch from auto to manual focus to defocus the lens.

Achieve a bokeh effect of glowing orbs by defocusing the lens when taking the picture

(Image taken on Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G)

Settings: ISO 1600, Shutter speed 1/50s; scroll left in Manual Focus mode to blur lights

You can also create light streaks with your device if there are moving vehicles around. To do this, set your ISO value low and increase shutter speed to at least two seconds. Don’t forget to stabilise your smartphone to get the best shot and ensure that you are a safe distance from the road!

Light streaks are plenty of fun – look out for moving lights from vehicles and ensure you are a safe distance from them.

(Image taken on Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G)
Settings: ISO 50, Shutter speed 2s

Capture Stunning Night Mood Scenes

As you explore your surroundings in your night photography trip, find a reflective surface that can illuminate the scene in a unique way. Again, toggle your smartphone’s shutter speed for greater control over light.

Default settings (left) work in well-lit area. But if you’re looking to have fun with reflective surfaces, toggle your smartphone’s shutter speed settings in Pro Mode (right) to give you greater control over the light.

(Images taken on Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G)

Settings (for right photo): ISO 1600, Shutter speed 1/50s

Fly to the Moon with Space Zoom

While the 30x zoom on the Galaxy S21 series can snap a clear picture of the bright moon (left), max out the zoom to make the most of the Space Zoom function (right) ¹

(Images taken on Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G)

The Space Zoom * feature can take your night photography even higher, especially when it comes to taking photos of the moon. With amazing zoom capability, the Galaxy S20 Ultra and S21 Ultra offer 100x Space Zoom for taking photos, helping you capture clear shots even when you are far away from the action. [1]

For more on this feature, click the guide here .

Enhance Your Photo with Post Production Magic

After snapping your pictures, remember to fine-tune them on your desired editing app before posting them on social media or in our Galaxy Gallery. You can enhance the vividness of your photos to achieve the desired mood by toggling with contrast, white balance and saturation. The most important this is to play around and have fun with this!

Ultimately, night photography is a fun way to make the most of the advanced features built within your Galaxy device, so be bold with the camera settings and explore all of the possibilities!

*Available for some Australian variant Galaxy devices operating on Android OS Version 10 (Q) and above. Settings and steps will vary between devices based to specifications and software. Please check user manuals here to see if your device has these functions.

Settings may also vary depending on the country or region. If you have an international device and require further support click here to get in touch with your Samsung subsidiary.

[1] 30 x and 100x Space Zoom includes digital zoom which may cause some image deterioration.

The sun goes down, the stars come out, city lights flicker on, and how you use your camera changes.

Night photography requires extra attention to light and motion — you may want a tripod, a special lens, a camera capable of increasing ISO without degrading image quality. There’s a lot to consider. But there’s also a lot to play with. Sometimes the right constraints give you freedom to discover the most interesting images. Read on for night photography tips that can help you make the most of shooting in the dark.

Sort out your night photography settings.

Shooting at night means low light. Whether you’re capturing the stars or the lights of the city, you’ll need to make sure there’s enough light on the subject for your camera to register that something’s there.

Nighttime photography settings are a good place to begin: opening up your aperture, slowing down your shutter speed, or (controversially) fiddling with your ISO (the sensitivity of your digital camera — comparable to film speed in a film camera). But you can also look for ways to adjust the light on your subject. That could mean adding a flash or a fill light or just asking your subject to step forward into the glow of a streetlamp.

Each of these has its own set of constraints, requiring either good planning or a little luck (if you want that tree branch to move out of your light, you’ll need a length of rope or a very steady wind). You’ll never get the control afforded by daytime photography settings, so when you’re aiming to take great night shots, be sure to give yourself time to experiment.

Anthony Pidgeon, a veteran of low-light and nighttime shoots, suggests starting with a few test shots to establish the optimal shutter speed and find the right white balance: “Because it’s dark, the image will take longer to register on the sensor or the film. That means your shutter speed has to be slower just to get the shot.

“You need to get a baseline exposure that shows you what you’re getting with the ambient light,” Pigeon says. “Then find out how far you can go without blowing out the highlights. ‘This cool neon sign — if I overexpose it, it will go out to white instead of this cool red or green.’ You work with that until you get your baseline.”

Find your light.

Alex Tan, a photographer and art director, says that night photography is the best environment to work in because unlike with daytime shoots the light’s “not changing — it’s very much the same throughout the night. And so you have a lot of room to experiment; you can keep trying things until you feel like you got it right without worrying about the light changing. During the day, when you’re outside, the sun is constantly changing.”

That consistency gives you time to play — even though you’ll need slow shutter speeds and a wide aperture — you have an evenly lit backdrop to experiment in.

Pidgeon recommends a few different ways to explore light in nighttime street photography. He notes that, “a lot of times you want to use light to define the shape of things or the scale of things. So if you’ve got light on one part of the building, and it just bleeds off so you can’t tell where the building ends and the night sky begins, that doesn’t look so great.

“Find a way to pop in a little something on the corner of that building, so that you’re defining the edge,” Pidgeon continues. “That can be enough to create interest. Sometimes it can be as simple as waiting for a car to go by and shine its headlights for a second; that just gives you that little edge. It’s a different frame of mind because you really have to think about the composition. You have to add things in, because you have less to work with.”

You may also want to bring a light source and play with light painting — there are many options that are small and easy to pack. As Pidgeon explains, “Put on a five-second exposure and shine a flashlight over something. You could use your phones, and be like, ‘When I count to three, we’re going to paint this little corner of the building.’” If you’re shooting digitally, you can immediately check your results. “If it didn’t work,” Pidgeon says, “you can just try it again; it can be really fun.“

Keep it sharp.

With longer exposure and a wider aperture, sharp focus on your subject can be tricky. To avoid blur, Tan notes , “You might have to be a little bit more steady if you’re opening up on your aperture or slowing your shutter speed. Shooting at night is a little bit slower of a game.”

He warns that “a lot of people miss focus at night; their subjects aren’t sharp. When they open up to a really wide depth of field, there’s not a lot of forgiveness on sharpness. If your subject moves an inch or two away from the camera, they all of a sudden go out of the range of focus.” Setting your shot up carefully and asking your human subjects to be still can help ensure that your image is clear.

Samuel Nute, a landscape photographer, has tips on night sky photography — sometimes called astrophotography— which requires very long exposures and especially careful attention to focus. His recommendation:

Using a cable to control the shutter remotely — so you’re not having to touch the camera — is really, really important. Having a tripod is important, as well. Because, again, you need to limit movement.”

If it’s a windy night, or you’re trying to capture star trails, Nute suggests using what you have on hand to minimize camera shake: “You can set up your tripod and then hang your backpack so that the tripod won’t move in the wind, acting like a sandbag of sorts.”

Prep, patience, and a sense of adventure.

Taking photos at night requires a little extra precision around camera settings and a bit more preparation than simple daytime snapshots. But the rewards can be great, and the nighttime scenes you discover through your lens may surprise you.

Pidgeon offers a last piece of advice for those setting off into the dark, suggesting that the real work is about “looking at it as an adventure — at what makes a compelling or interesting picture versus being more control oriented. You need a certain amount of control to come up with something that technically works, but with night photography, you embrace the random things that happen. You can come up with some cool shots if you’re in that mindset.”

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But if you’re using a tripod—which is a great idea for night shots, as it will stabilize the camera during long exposures—be sure VR is turned off. Shutter speeds that are likely to yield the best results: 1/15, 1/8, 1/4 second or longer—and you’ll need VR or a tripod for those. For more advanced night shots , a tripod is …

Joel Larsgaard

Have you recently received a video or photo texted to you that looked like an old-school Atari pixelated mess? Most smartphone users have had that happen from time to time.

Your picture or video might look amazing when you take it. And it looks fantastic when you play it back on your device. But for some reason, when you send it, it turns into a grainy horror show.

Fortunately, there are ways to send videos and photos so that our friends and family members can enjoy the crystal-clear quality that our phone manufacturers intended.

In this article, we’re going to talk about how to fix blurry photos by exploring a number of image transmission options.

How to Fix Blurry Photos and Videos

First, this isn’t about megapixels. Your phone is not the problem.

The blurry image problem stems from your cellular network. When you send a text or video through your MMS (multimedia messaging service) app, your images and videos are likely to be greatly compressed. Different cell phone carriers have different standards as to what is allowed to be sent without being compressed.

Those amounts range from 0.3MB to 1.2MB. To make it worse, if you are sending a file to someone who has a different phone carrier, the limit is often at the lower end of that spectrum.

Why Is Picture Quality Worse When Receiving a Pic From an iPhone?

That’s a good question. Apple’s proprietary app, iMessage, does allow for sending and receiving larger files over the internet. If one iPhone user sends a video or picture to another iPhone user, they are likely to receive the message without major compression issues.

That’s because iMessage runs on your internet signal. You can send iMessages through Wi-Fi, LTE or 4G. Many other messaging apps run on this same premise of communicating via the internet as opposed to running on your cellular network. A few examples are Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts and WhatsApp.

Because iPhone users most often send messages through iMessage, their photos and videos usually look great to other iPhone users. But if you are using a different platform, like Windows or Android, you are likely to get a degraded image.

Here Are 3 Steps for Sending High-Quality Videos and Texts

1. If You Have an iPhone, Keep iMessage Turned On

That will ensure that you are sending high-quality videos and photos to other iPhone users.

2. Sending a File to an Android Device? Use Email

If you are sending a file to someone who uses Android, consider sending the file via email instead of text. For instance, Gmail has a 25MB limit for attachments, and that’s much higher than the limit for most MMS services. If you send your photos or video through Gmail, your recipient is going to get a much better image than if you send via your MMS app.

If you have an Android phone, you’ll want to consider sending all of your photos and videos through an internet-based messaging service (like the ones noted above) as opposed to your stock MMS app. You could also send the images via email as noted above.

3. Use a Cloud-Based Service

Another option (which also deals with the issue of sending really large files) is using a cloud-based service like Dropbox or Google Drive. If you are a Gmail user, you’ll find it’s pretty easy to attach an image or video as a Google Drive file. After you upload the file, you can also text the link to your recipient.

Google Drive will give you 15GB of storage to use for free just for signing up. You can also have your pictures and videos automatically uploaded to Google Drive by enabling the Auto Backup feature on the app (you’ll need an internet signal for that to work).

It takes a bit more work to send a file through Dropbox, but hey, you’ll be getting the file there in its original and glorious state.

4. Download and Use the Send Anywhere App

And one more great option, for the sake of being thorough, is the app Send Anywhere. This app allows you to share photos, videos and contacts very easily and without degrading the quality. There are zero limitations on file type, size or amount — and it’s free!

One Final Option

Now that you know how to send images while preserving their quality, you may also be interested in fixing photos with a little magic.

You can manually fix blurry photos by using photo-editing software. You can sign up for a trial version of Photoshop, but there are some free options as well. Check these out:

is a highly-rated photo editor is an open-source image editor is a free graphics editor which comes with Microsoft Windows
• Photoshop Expressis like a free and stripped-down version of Photoshop
• Pixlis a free program with more than two million effects

Do you have tips for sending crystal clear photos and videos? Let us know in the comments below!

Harry Guinness
Harry Guinness
Writer

Harry Guinness is a photography expert and writer with nearly a decade of experience. His work has been published in newspapers like The New York Times and on a variety of other websites, from Lifehacker to Popular Science and Medium’s OneZero. Read more.

In long exposure photography, you take a picture with a slow shutter speed—generally somewhere between five and sixty seconds—so that any movement in the scene gets blurred. It’s a way to show the passage of time in a single image. Let’s look at how to do them right.

Long exposure photography is all about showing movement and time passing in a single photo; it’s one of the ways you can show motion in still images. While you can use long exposure times to take photos of subjects that you want to stay still—such as the night sky—these aren’t strictly long exposure images because, unless you’re deliberately shooting star trails, they don’t show motion.

The classic examples—and some of the most popular long exposure subjects—are photos of bodies of water like the sea or waterfalls. Look at the long exposure image below. I’ve used a shutter speed of 10 seconds to blur and smooth the water and clouds, giving them an ethereal quality. This is the long exposure look.

I took the next shot about ten minutes later. I’ve used a shutter speed of 1/100th of a second here, and you can see that the water and clouds look very different from the long exposure shot above.

The Technical Stuff

For a long exposure image, you’re really only after one thing: a slow shutter speed. You’ll start to get the long exposure look at around half a second for fast moving subjects, but generally, you’ll want a shutter speed of between ten and thirty seconds. For some photos, you might even want to go much longer. Every other decision you make will be in service to this goal.

A tripod is essential. Without one, you won’t be able to get sharp pictures at slow shutter speeds. So don’t leave home without your tripod.

Unless you have a compelling reason not to, always set your ISO to the camera’s native setting. For almost all cameras, that’s 100. This gives you the slowest shutter speeds and the highest quality images.

Aperture is a little trickier to set. With most lenses, you’ll start to see a drop in image quality after around f/18. Around f/16 is normally considered to offer the best balance between a slow shutter speed and a sharp image so it’s the best starting place for long exposure images. You normally want a large depth of field anyway.

If you’ve set your ISO to 100 and the aperture to f/16 and you still aren’t getting a slow enough shutter speed for the shot you want, you should consider using a neutral density filter instead of a tighter aperture or low ISO mode. Neutral density filters go in front of the lens and block between one and ten stops of light from entering the camera. For example, if you get a proper exposure with a shutter speed of one second without a ND filter, adding a three stop filter will take the shutter speed needed for a proper exposure to eight seconds; a six stop filter will take it to 64 seconds.

Most cameras have a maximum shutter speed of thirty seconds. If you want to go beyond this, you’ll need to use Bulb mode and time the exposure yourself.

Other Tips and Tricks

The best time to take long exposure photos are in the hours around sunrise and sunset. Not only do you get great light, but since there’s less of it, it’s easier to have slower shutter speeds. You can take long exposure shots at midday, but you’ll need to stack the ND filters.

The longer the exposure time, the more things will blur and the less texture and definition you’ll have in the moving areas of the image. You always need to find the right balance for the look you’re after. One day last year, I went to shoot waves breaking over a local pier. I originally started with a shutter speed of eight seconds and this was the result. It’s not great.

I was dramatically over estimating how long a shutter speed I wanted for the image I had in mind. Here’s a shot I took at 1/5th of a second. Much better.

Play around with different subjects. Water is one of the simplest and can lead to stunning results, but anything that moves can work. Bright objects that move at night—like cars or ferris wheels—are another easy starting place that look great.

Long exposure images work best when you have something moving contrasted with something totally stationary. This is why they’re so popular with landscape photographers. While the water looks cool in all the photos in this article, if it wasn’t for the rocks or landscapes, it would just look like a blurry mess.

Since you have to slow down anyway to take long exposure images, they’re a great time to put serious thought into composition. You can also use them as an opportunity to play around with limited color palettes.

Long exposure images are incredibly rewarding. They’re one of the few areas of photography where smartphone cameras just can’t compete. Most long exposure images are also landscapes, so be sure to check out our guide to great landscape photos as well.

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Harry Guinness
Harry Guinness is a photography expert and writer with nearly a decade of experience. His work has been published in newspapers like The New York Times and on a variety of other websites, from Lifehacker to Popular Science and Medium’s OneZero.
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A way to eliminate the chance of ending up with a shaky photo is to find support of some kind – hold your phone against something still and solid, like a table, a bench, or whatever is around. It should make a difference. And if you’re really serious about the quality of your photos, consider getting a tripod made especially for smartphones.

A timer might help

As we already stressed, shaky hands and night-time photography don’t fit. But even if you’re blessed with rock-steady hands, there’s still a chance of introducing some blur to the image when pressing the shutter button. Today’s phones are really quick at taking photos and exhibit little to no shutter lag whatsoever. Because of this, the act of pressing the button itself might result in a slight movement of the phone being used. A way to solve this is to enable your camera app’s inbuilt timer. A 2-second delay should do.

Try using your phone’s Night Mode

Most modern smartphones have a night mode built into their camera apps, and those phones that don’t may take advantage of a third-party camera app. Enabling the mode isn’t a silver bullet – it might produce better night photos, it might make them worse, or it might make no difference at all – but nevertheless, giving it a try won’t hurt. Give it a go and see how your phone behaves with and without the Night Mode enabled.

Don’t use your flash from too far

2 meters) from whatever or whoever you’re taking a photo of. Needless to say, using your flash at distant objects and scenery shots is pointless.