How to shoot great night photographs with a compact digital camera

Compact digital camera these days pack powerful punch. You can shoot great night shots with these small cameras and create captivating posters out of them for your living room. All you need is a good subject, the right time in the evening and inexpensive stable tripod.

However, it would help a lot if your compact digital camera had a manual exposure mode.
While some absolutely basic cameras have a night shot mode that might work well on a tripod. With a manual exposure mode you will have most control of shooting a impressive night shot. For cameras that have a manual mode, set the aperture to the highest number (most compact cameras stop down to a maximum of f/8). The reason behind this is to capture the greatest detail in you picture and if you happen to shoot any street light they tend to be attractive stars rather than burning a hole. Most importantly, when the aperture is stopped down. The time required to correctly expose a night shot stretches to several seconds. This would be indicated by your camera's in built exposure meter.
This combination of aperture/time (exposure) creates the drama in your shot. An exposure lasting several seconds helps blur or completely remove any movements in the shot, such as anyone walking in and out of your shot during its exposure. Besides those neat traffic trails of headlights and tail lights are possible only with an exposure lasting several seconds.

The best time in the evening to shoot is after the light have been turned on but before the sky turns completely dark while there is still some blue left in the sky.
One of the most essential tools in shooting a picture in a low light situation is a stable tripod. For most compact camera's an inexpensive tripod is more than sufficient as these camera's are light weight. Night photography is impossible with out a stable support.

Finally the subject of your shot and composition play an important part. choose a subject that reflects light. Try to avoid light sources shining bright on the camera lens as these can blow out any details in you image.

I shot the above picture of night scene in Santa Fe NM, using a cannon powershot A620. I had a light velbon aluminum tripod and used the manual mode for the exposure. I stopped the aperture down to f/8 to get the details of display inside the window as well as keeping the edge of the screen sharp. I might have exposed to about 20 seconds. Although you can see the blurry motion of an individual walking towards the camera. he is visible simply, because he walked in before the exposure ended. Otherwise there would have been no trace of him. The above shot was taken 10 minutes before the sky turned completely dark. Most of the light for this shot was from street lamps illuminating the walls of the shop front. hence i tried to avoid getting any of street lamps in my composition.

So in summary I followed all the above guidelines to portray the scene as I saw it. You can do better following the above guidelines and a bit of trial and error.