Since I’ve recently discussed Portrait and Landscape mode, I want to touch on variations of them. Night Portrait and Night Landscape are designed for shooting those scenes at night. Your digital camera may or may not have these modes, or they may be called something slightly different. Needless to say, when using these Night modes there is one thing you need to do to get good quality pictures.

Use a tripod! (Mine is in the back of my car about 75% of the time.) Since these Night scene modes both use a slow shutter speed, the camera needs to be rock steady. The longer exposure times help record more of the ambient light. Night Portrait mode will force the flash on so that your portrait subject is lit well, along with recording the street scene behind them. Night Landscape forces the flash off and strictly relies on long exposure times (perhaps a few seconds) to properly record the scene.

If you have a table or railing available you could use the self timer on your digital camera. Using the self timer allows the camera to settle after you mash the shutter button. Using a device like The Pod is another choice. It’s a small beanbag with a tripod screw on top so you can mount your camera to it. The Pod works very well.