If you're planning on getting into night photography, you need to understand some of the different settings and menus that will give you that particular effect you're looking for.

Definitely, you won't be able to take night shots if you're going to depend on fast shutter speeds. You actually need the opposite. This is where you will learn about timed exposures which will give you the best exposed pictures for night photography. You'll need to learn about some of the different things that you'll need whenever you're tackling night photography.

The first equipment that you need to have when taking night shots is a camera which has an accessible "Bulb" setting in its Manual mode. There are cameras which have a "night scene" mode that are accessible by turning the typical dial on your camera which has the different settings for your camera. However, if you would like to be able take exceptional shots, your best bet would be a digital SLR camera.

These types of cameras are able to offer a wide range of slow shutter speeds which is accessible in the manual exposure setting.  The shutter speeds of typical DSLRs range from 1 second to 30 seconds. At the "Bulb" setting, you'll be able to manually set the number of seconds-and sometimes minutes with how long you'll leave the shutter open.

The Bulb or B setting is a widely used shutter setting for night photography. Because it is discouraged for photographers to simply use a higher ISO for getting enough light in their pictures. What it does is expose the picture properly but it also adds the noise in the picture and thus makes it less-editable in photo-editing programs such as Photoshop, especially when the shadows are being manipulated.

For the Bulb setting, when you are on it, the shutter will normally open as you press the shutter button of the camera but the difference in being on this setting is that it will indefinitely stay open as long as you're holding the pressing down the button.

Just be sure that your camera is on a tripod so that your hand movement will not contribute camera shake and eventually blur the picture. A little practice here and there and you'll no doubt be able to come up with a perfect timed exposure. Always be sure to lock your ISO setting to the lowest possible number so that you'll get the least noise possible.