Hour Photography Cheat Sheet

Working With Light Changes Throughout the Day

I keep a reference sheet on my desk now that maps out approximate camera settings and what to expect at different times of day. People who shoot consistently outdoors end up needing something like this whether they call it a cheat sheet or not, because the light doesn't wait for you to figure it out. Here is the breakdown I've accumulated over years of trying to get it right without staring at my histogram like a nervous person. Golden hour runs roughly from one hour after sunrise to just before solar noon, and one hour before sunset until just after. Blue hour is the window between civil twilight and nautical twilight when the sky goes that deep indigo color. Most photographers know these names but mess up the exposure because they keep shooting like it's midday. At golden hour, your sunny 16 rule starts failing around 45 minutes after sunrise or before sunset. You will need to open up two to three stops from f/16. I usually start around f/5.6, ISO 200, and adjust from there depending on whether I have a lens hood or I am wide open to a prime. The light is directional but soft, which means contrast ratios between highlights and shadows are still aggressive even though it looks gentle on the ground. Don't fall into the trap of overexposing the highlights because the scene looks warm and flattering on your LCD. One time I shot a wedding at golden hour and blew out the bride's veil completely because I was trusting the camera meter instead of looking at the histogram. I carry a polarizer for this window now and check every single frame.

Blue hour is trickier because your eyes adapt to the low light and your camera sensor does not. You are going to want to mount on a tripod. Shoot between ISO 100 and ISO 800 depending on your lens aperture and how much noise you can tolerate in post. Expose for the shadows and let the highlights blow if you have to, because recovery from clipped highlights in blue hour skies is nearly impossible in most RAW files. I found this out the hard way at a coastal shoot where the sky had bright patches near the horizon. I metered for the sky and the foreground became a silhouette I could not bring back.

Midday Harsh Light Management

Most people avoid midday photography entirely, but that is unnecessary if you know what you are doing. The sun is directly overhead, which creates harsh shadows under eyes, noses, and chins in portraits. For landscapes, midday light actually brings out saturation in foliage because the direct light hits the green surfaces without atmospheric diffusion. If you are shooting architecture, the top-down light reveals facades that are invisible at other times. The workaround here is simple but requires discipline. Use a reflector or a scrim to fill shadows in portrait work. In landscape photography, wait for cloud cover or position yourself so that buildings or terrain block the direct sunlight from hitting your subject. I shoot a lot of urban photography and I learned to map which streets get shadow coverage between 11 AM and 2 PM. That knowledge is worth more than any expensive gear. Without that mental map, you waste hours driving around looking for usable light. Another thing nobody tells you about midday shooting is that your camera's dynamic range gets tested harder than you expect. The sun is a point light source at noon, and the ratio between lit areas and shadow areas can exceed 8 stops. Most modern sensors handle about 13 to 14 stops, but you lose bits when you compress everything into a JPEG. Shoot RAW. Bracket your exposures if the scene is extreme. Two frames, one exposed for highlights and one for shadows, and blend them in post. This takes about four minutes extra and saves you from reconstructing an entire image from a single bad exposure.

Night and Low Light Photography

Night photography is where people make the most expensive mistakes because they buy gear they do not understand instead of learning the basics first. The core issue is not your camera. It is your ability to see what the sensor is capturing. Use live view at maximum zoom to confirm focus. Autofocus fails repeatedly in low light on most cameras unless you have a dedicated AF assist lamp or you are focusing on a bright edge. Start with these baseline settings for night landscapes: ISO 1600, f/2.8 to f/4, and a shutter speed of 15 to 30 seconds. Longer exposures introduce noise and star trails. Shorter exposures require higher ISO which also introduces noise. There is a sweet spot for every camera, and you find it by testing. I ran a series of tests on a few bodies last year and discovered that my Canon would produce cleaner images at ISO 3200 with a 20 second exposure than at ISO 1600 with a 30 second exposure. The noise profile changed enough at longer exposures that the lower ISO advantage disappeared. For astrophotography specifically, the 500 rule still applies as a starting point. Divide 500 by your focal length to get the maximum shutter speed before stars start trailing. On a full frame sensor with a 24mm lens, that gives you roughly 20 seconds. Crop sensors change this calculation. I use a full frame and the rule works consistently for me.

The Hour Photography Cheat Sheet for Quick Reference

If you want something printable, the essential data points are: Sunrise to 1 hour after: Soft directional light, ISO 200 to 400, f/4 to f/8, shutter speeds around 1/125 to 1/500. Best for landscapes with morning mist and exterior architecture. 1 hour before sunset to sunset: Warm directional light, same settings as above but bias toward lower ISO and narrower apertures if you want depth of field. Good for portraits and street photography.

Blue hour: Tripod mandatory, ISO 100 to 800, f/2.8 to f/5.6, shutter speeds from 1 second to 2 minutes depending on your target. Cityscapes and seascapes work best here. Midday: Diffuse the light or seek shade. ISO 100 to 200, f/8 to f/16 for landscapes, f/2.8 to f/4 for portraits with fill flash or reflector. Bracket if the contrast ratio is high. Night: ISO 1600 to 6400 depending on your sensor, f/2.8 or wider, shutter speeds from 15 seconds to several minutes. Tripod and remote release required for anything over 1/60 second handheld.

What This Cheat Sheet Cannot Fix

I need to be honest about the limitations. A settings reference sheet does not account for altitude, weather fronts, or seasonal shifts in sun angle. A cheat sheet written for Phoenix in July will mislead you in Seattle in November. The solar position changes by roughly 23.5 degrees between summer and winter solstice, which shifts golden hour timing by up to an hour depending on your latitude. Use an app like PhotoPills or Sun Surveyor to get the exact sun position for your location on the day you are shooting, then apply the settings from the cheat sheet as a starting point, not a law. Another limitation is lens selection. The settings above assume a standard wide angle or normal lens. If you are shooting with a 400mm telephoto, your shutter speed requirements change dramatically because the effective light gathering and subject movement behave differently. I learned this when I borrowed a friend's telephoto for a wildlife shoot and used my standard landscape settings. Every single frame was motion blurred because I did not account for the longer focal length requiring faster shutter speeds to freeze subject movement. The rule of thumb is to use at least 1 over your focal length as a minimum handheld shutter speed, so 400mm means 1/400 second minimum. There is also the issue of sensor size bias in many cheat sheets. Full frame sensors handle high ISO better than APS-C or micro four thirds. If you are shooting on a smaller sensor, bump your ISO targets up by one to two stops compared to what the chart says for full frame. Your camera will produce cleaner images at ISO 3200 on a full frame body than at ISO 1600 on an APS-C body in most cases. This is a quirk of pixel density and read noise characteristics that manufacturers do not advertise clearly.

Print this out, laminate it if you shoot in rain or sand, and carry it with you. The first time you pull it out during a shoot when the light is changing fast and you have no time to think, you will appreciate having the data in front of you rather than scrolling through forum posts on your phone in the dark.