Why does night photography require the use of manual controls while daytime photography can get by with Auto Mode?
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I’m not in auto mode often so I might be wrong. But I haven’t seen auto mode flat out not working in low light without giving you a reason on the LCD display.
But, a couple of things I can think of:
1. Most cameras has a function which the shutter wouldn’t trigger if it wasn’t able to acquire focus. During night time with everything being darker, it’s more difficult to acquire focus. So if you see it in your viewfinder that the camera tries to get focus but never takes a shot when you press the shutter, that’s the reason.
2. Night time photography is much more about trade off between various settings. You can have the aperture wide open, you can expose for longer, you can increase ISO. Each of those has their own draw backs. What auto mode does is automatically juggle between these settings to acquire a correct exposure. But because they all have their drawbacks, there are usually settings that limit how far they can go, especially shutter speed and ISO. During nighttime, the correct exposure might require shutter speed and/or ISO beyond your set limit, so the camera’s system is literally not allowed the correct exposure because of these settings. You can try to raise those limits in your settings and see if it works in nighttime again. But beware of the drawbacks they present and compensate for them in other ways.
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