The Canon m50 is one of the most popular entry level mirrorless cameras on the market right now with a large number of photographers, videographers, and vloggers all turning to it as their camera body of choice. The excellent image quality of the camera and affordable price tag makes it a solid option for working in a wide range of niches and the versatility of the m50 ensures that you can almost always get what you want from it.
We have noticed more and more people who own the Canon m50 reaching out and asking about how they are able to improve the night photography performance of the camera over the last few weeks. Due to this, we have decided to publish this article to try and help as many of our readers as possible who own the Canon m50 and are planning on using it for night photography.
Due to the versatility of the m50 and there being different types and styles of night photography, some of the tips and tricks below may be useless to you. On the flipside, of this though, some of them may be able to drastically improve your image quality at night and ensure that you are able to get the best photograph possible.
Consider A Free Night Photography Course
Now, this first time is almost always dismissed by the people we recommend it to but night photography is very different from the majority of other photography niches due to the lack of light. Even intermediate-level photographers who have years of experience can sometimes struggle to get the best possible image quality out of their camera when transitioning to the night photography niche.
As one of our readers, you are able to take advantage of our offer of a no-commitment, no-obligation trial to Skillshare premium for two months. This allows you to enroll in one of the best online night photography courses available without you having to spend a single cent. Not only do most people have to pay for the course but it also has an excellent reputation amongst photographers so it is well worth checking out.
Invest In A Suitable Tripod
The Canon m50 is a suitable camera body for both entry level and intermediate level photographers, videographers and vloggers. Although the majority of the intermediate level people we see reaching out will already have a decent tripod as a part of their equipment, many of the entry level people dont.
Adding a decent, cheap, entry-level tripod to your collection of camera accessories can be a great way to improve the image quality that you are able to capture. Due to the lack of available light getting to the camera sensor on your Canon m50, even a slight movement can spoil an otherwise excellent photograph so having some cheap yet reliable image stabilization is well worth it.
Realistically, if you do have the money available and you plan to stick to photography, videography, or vlogging for many years to come, something like the Manfrotto MT055CXPRO3 tripod is an excellent long term option for you. In our opinion, it is one of the best tripods ever made and its intermediate level price tag makes it an absolute bargain in our opinion.
Consider Getting Some Steel Wool
There has been a huge increase in the number of people taking part in urban night photograph to share photographs of local landmarks at night on their Instagram pages. One way that you are able to easily make your photograph stand out is to incorporate the use of some steel wool into your photograph as demonstrated in the image above.
Using steel wool in your photograph adds both light and movement to the image to add that additional element of excitement that would otherwise be lost. The image above offers an excellent example of this as the photograph would just be a poorly lit photo of a bridge without the use of steel wool.
Although using steel wool is a very popular technique, some areas do restrict its use, especially in the dry season so always be sure to check local regulations prior to use. Other than that you should be good to go though and the use of steel wool can really make your night photographs stand out on social media and help to grow your accounts.
Take Advantage Of The Landscape
This is another tip for those of you who are closer to being an entry-level photographer than an intermediate level photographer. So many people new to night photography fail to take advantage of the local landscape and end up missing some excellent photographs. Although the photo above may not be the best to show this, it definatley helps to get out point across.
The trees in the for-ground, the mountain in the mid and the moon in the distance all come together to add depth and scale to the photograph. We know that the use of mountains will depend on your location but even if you are in an urban location, you can use things such as statues, bridges or tall buildings to a similar effect.
Experiment With Manual Focus
With so many entry-level photographers using the Canon m50 for their photography needs, there are a large number of people getting into the bad habit of relying on their autofocus. Not only is this a bad habit to get into for general photography, it is especially bad for night photography as the lack of light usually ends up causing problems with autofocus making it keep tracking constantly. This means that everything in your frame will go in and out of focus constantly and end up causing more harm than good.
One limiting factor of the Canon m50 is the limited range of lenses available for it unless you choose to use a lens adaptor or converter. That said though, the limited range of lenses that are available for the Canon m50 have an excellent build quality meaning that the manual focus ring on them is extremley easy to use.
This means that it should be very easy for even someone brand new to photography to manually focus their lens. This ensures that you are able to ensure that your Canon m50 is focusing on the main subject of your photograph to help improve the image quality of your night photography.
Play Around With Your Camera Settings
Although there are a bunch of suggested camera settings for night photography with the Canon m50 online, these are just benchmarks and you will have to play around with the settings on your m50 for the best image quality possible. Each location that you capture your photographs in will have different lighting and a different depth meaning that there is no one size fits all setup for night photography.
Thankfully, the camera setting menu on the Canon m50 is very easy to navigate allowing you to quickly and easily make changes to your setup without having to waste time. This allows you to tweak your camera settings to best fit the needs of the location of your night photography session and get you the best possible photographs each and every time.
Capture Your Photographs In RAW Format
Thankfully, with a large number of popular photography YouTubers constantly recommending that their followers switch over to capturing their content in RAW rather than JPEG, we see less and less people making this mistake. Although JPEG is a popular format due to its much smaller size, the compression rate on the file type can really spoil the quality of a photograph.
Although RAW is a much larger file size, modern SD cards are much cheaper than they used to be making it easy to ensure you have all of the space you require. Not only does RAW ensure you save the best photograph possible after capturing it but it also ensures that you have the best starting base for any post production work too.
Although this is a quick and easy little switch to make, we feel that many of our readers who use the Canon m50 for night photography will be surprised with just how much of an improvement this simple change can make. Even if you are using a small SD card with your m50, switching over to RAW format just for your night photography sessions can still help.
Test Different Levels Of Exposure
We are not going to go into much depth on this one in this article as there are an absolute ton of guide online about how you are able to use different levels of exposure and the various ways that you are able to tweak it to your advantage. We would highly recommend that you play around with your explore for your night photography sessions as it really can change the image that you capture with minimal effort being required on your part.
Plan Your Night Photography Session
This last one is a little tip that we even see professional photographs overlook and that is to actually plan your night photography session before traveling to the location you want to work in. Low cloud cover, bad weather, the phase of the moon, and the stars available all come into play in various night photography niches so always check that conditions are suitable before leaving your house. Spending a few minutes doing this on Google can easily save you hours and prevent your driving to where you want to capture photographs only to find that it is raining with low cloud cover and very bad natural lighting.
