ESSENTIAL GEAR
The kit Paul Groom relies on for capturing pro-quality night shots
STURDY TRIPOD & ADJUSTABLE HEAD 1
A good tripod is essential for night photography, as most exposures will be too long to shoot handheld, and it’s worth investing in a decent pair of legs and a head. Paul explains: “This helps keep your camera stable for sharp shots every time, while a good tripod head is easier to adjust to get the horizontals and verticals of buildings straight.”
Paul uses a Manfrotto 055XPROB aluminium tripod and 496 centre ball head.
CANON FULL-FRAME EOS CAMERA 2
Both Pauls use the full-frame mirrorless Canon EOS R5. “The R5 is a brilliant camera, with a great 45MP sensor that captures a large dynamic range in raw images, ideal for retaining detail in the highlights and shadows in highcontrast night scenes,” says pro Paul. “Also, with such large 8192 x 5464-pixel images, it gives me lots of scope to crop if I need to, and still have decent-sized images. It also has amazing AF eye detection for my portrait work.”
WIDE-ANGLE LENSES 3
For most city photography, you’ll be using a wideangle lens. Pro Paul uses three main full-frame wide lenses: the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM prime, the budget Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye, and his trusty Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM. “I’ve been using this old L-series EF 17-40mm for nearly 20 years and it’s still going strong,” he says. “It’s incredibly reliable, not too heavy, and sharp from centre to the edges at f/11. I use it all the time for my architecture photography.”
CANON PRO TILT-SHIFT LENSES 4
Wonky architectural photos, in which horizons aren’t level and buildings aren’t straight, look awkward to the eye. Another issue is that if you photograph tall buildings from up close and have to angle your camera upwards to get the whole thing in the frame, this causes converging verticals, so it looks like buildings are leaning backwards. Pro Paul avoids this issue by using his Canon TS-E 17mm, 24mm and 45mm pro tilt-shift lenses. By composing so that his camera sensor is square to the architecture, he can then shift the lens elements up to fit taller buildings into the frame.