Shooting Christmas lights at night

[RobertWurster]

I have a Canon HX-A1 and I would like to shoot various homes that have lots of Christmas lights. Should I put the camera in manual mode and look into the viewfinder and adjust the camera until the image looks ok, or is there some standard camera settings that I can use? I don’t want a washed out look or an overexposed look. I want it to look great so I don’t have to do any tweeking in post. Any suggestions would be great. If you have done it and it turned out great let me know. Thanks. Oh, this would be for my own use and not for publication.

[Anonymous]

manual settings is the way to go. just keep an eye on the exposure, I don’t know about your camera’s low light capabilities, so it’s hard to say how much you should adjust the aperture and shutter speeds.

John

[D0n]

Set camera to manual, set color balance to “Incandescent or Indoor”…

1/2 hour before sunset, till dark, 1/2 hour before sunrise till light….there’ll be a sweetspot when the daylight brightness balances with the xmas lights, and the sky will be a nice shade of deep blue….

[NewBirthProductions]

From what I hear from users on this site and from people who own one the Canon HX-A1 has only fair low light ability

[Author]

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