Have you been trying to get a good photo of your kids in front of the Christmas tree lights but cannot figure out what settings to use on your camera? This is the tutorial you need! Let me show you a quick and easy way to photograph your Christmas tree lights at night for a magical Christmas photo! Let me start this off by saying that I am not a professional photographer. I don’t claim to be and never will be professional. But if you’re an average mamarazzi like me with a DSLR camera who likes to take pictures as a hobby, this is a good tip for you.
Here is my Christmas tree photo of my son in front of our tree at night.
Here is another similar shot I took that night.
No, my tree doesn’t have a million lights on it. I’m not Clark Griswolding it up over here.
I am not sure how many lights are on my tree, honestly, but I can promise you it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Want to know how I got my photo to look like that?
Here is what I did: I turned my camera on Manual mode, set my ISO at 3200 (set yours as high as it will go) then I propped my camera up on the back of the sofa since I don’t have a tripod. I focused the camera on the tree and then cranked my shutter speed down to 1/30th. For those of you scratching your head and going “shutterspeed??” here is the dial you turn to change your shutter speed if you have a Canon camera:
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After you change your ISO and focus on the tree crank that dial on down til you get in the 1/30th range.
Even though the camera was telling me the pics would be way overblown I snapped them anyway, and this is what turned out. Here’s some amazing news…those pics above are straight outta the camera!
Here are the details on the settings used on these photos in case you’re interested. (My Amazon affiliate links)
Canon dSLR camera
ISO 3200
f/1.8 (I love this lens)
ss 1/30th
Update: I tried to take pics of G in front of the tree every year for a few years to measure his growth.
2010 & 2011
2012
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This is great advice, and stuning pictures!
You’d get far better results shooting in aperture priority mode on a tripod with a low ISO (200~400), high f-stop (f/8 minimum), and letting the camera choose the exposure time. Then tinker with exposure compensation until it looks the way you want it to.
Hey there Beth – just 2 2 cents and no offence BUT – as far as I remember my photography ABC this will not work unless the kid sits or stands real still – or it´ll become a ghost or will not be seen in the pic ata all – right? 😉 Merry Xmas and warm greetz form Berlin Germany 😉
Nice pics anyhow <3
Because your lens goes to a 1.8 F stop, it is able to let the light into the camera much better than those standard lenses. My lens’ lowest f stop is a 5.6. Make note that because of that, a lower shutter speed will need to be used. Also, because the ISO is set so high, some of the image may turn out more yellow than desired so keep that in mind.
I am photographing an Advent Jesse tree event tonight and I just did a quick search on how to shoot at night and this is perfect, thank you, thank you! Your tree looks so magical too!
xo, Nicole
Awesome pics love my Canon too.
Thanks..great info….
Cute photos! Not sure if you’re looking for constructive criticism, but I’d personally bring the ISO way down. You’re losing a lot of detail in the photos and increasing the amount of grain. It’s great having lenses that go to 1.8 or 1.4, but I think you’d find the photo would be a lot sharper around 3.2; shooting wide open all the time isn’t always a good idea. I don’t know if you use off camera flash at all, but you could capture nice, well lit photos of people with the lights still twinkly in the background. I usually set my flash to the lowest setting, my aperture to about f3.5/4, and my iso around 250. I use two of them on light stands and put them on both sides of the frame. Just a suggestion! You can totally tell me to go to hell. ?
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