Photographing the Nocturnal Animals of America

Being somewhat of a seeing in the dark specialist, some photographer friends of mine came to me with some questions. Of what they asked me, the most important thing they asked was how to take the best photos of animals at night; or more specifically what would be the most universal way to actually see the nocturnal animals at night all over the United States since they were planning on making a cross-country photographing trip.

In actuality I had never been asked that before, so I had to sit and think for a moment. From how photography works, it needs light to be reflected off the target image. That light needs to be bright enough and last long enough for the image to be captured by the camera. These two things primarily revolve around what the particular camera is capable of. Most professional photographers these days use a digital SLR camera from Nikon or Canon, my friends in fact use Nikon D300’s.

For these types of cameras, there really is only two ways of making sure they can take the best pictures they can during a night shoot. The first is the contemporary method of boosting the light output by means of artificial light, i.e. a flash. But having a flash powerful enough and focused enough to hit get a high definition shot of a potentially moving target at night is quite a challenge. It would require a massive flash and it would burn through power blazingly fast. To use this method, lots of batteries and such would need to be brought with.

The second method is a little more innovative and recent due to the required technology’s advancements and availability has increased. The second method involves lowering the threshold in which a camera can effectively see in the dark. One cannot simply keep the shutter of a camera open longer to obtain enough light for the image (well you can but only to a certain extent), if you did, then the picture will be overexposed in areas where the light was strongest and or underexposed for all other regions of the image.

To effectively lower the seeing threshold of the camera, one needs to affix a lens that allows the camera to essentially have night vision. This is done by means of attaching a night vision lens to the body of the camera itself. However, most night vision lens cannot be directly attached to the camera body since the attachment points are incompatible; however, there are extra aftermarket adapters that allow for the use of night visions monocular scopes to be used as a camera lens to take night vision pictures.

Once a night vision scope is equipped as a camera lens, the settings need to be adjusted. And while every situation is different, the one common factor is that all of the controls need to be set to manual. The other settings, such as shutter speed should be set to slow enough to let in enough light but quick enough to make sure there is no image blur. Then make sure to set the light sensitivity as high as possible without causing the natural graininess that come from night vision to overtake the image quality.

Craig Pearson is an avid hunter, outdoorsman, and adventurist. His main passions are hog hunting in Texas and writing about his many adventures. He currently blogs for nightvision4less.com, a supplier of high quality night vision equipment.

About Jakk: Jakk Ogden is a professional self-employed blogger and the founder / owner of Technology Blogged. 22, with a love for good writing, you'll find me playing 'Drag Racing' on my HTC One X and rocking a pair of Grado headphones. If you love technology, be sure to subscribe to my feed for unique editorials. Find me on Google+. View author profile.