Night time exposure setting

Herman

The Image Stimulator
Location
The Netherlands
Name
Herman
Hi there, don't worry it's just me again.

Which manual settings you recommend to take pictures of lighted night time buildings ?
400 Asa and 1/30 sec. and f 3.5 - 5.6 ?

Best regards, Herman
 
I dug around for an example. This was shot at iso400, f5.6, and 2 seconds:

r8.JPG


Now the windows may be overexposed for your liking, but I don't see how I could've gotten much of an image out of 1/30th of a second.
 
Yes, theres no set formula (though, having said that, someone is bound to produce one). I'm afraid I just do try it and see, myself. some work, some don't. Because I prefer noise to be the least possible, I will often set the ISO first, and let the camera decide on aperture and shutter. I'll wind it up until I get to a shutter speed I can keep stable. With my X100, ISO3200 is good. But with some older cameras I noticed that 400 was fine because the cameras were stabilised which made up for my shakes.

It will be different with each set of circumstances, as well. A building lit from the inside will have different requirements to that lit from the outside, for example. The quality of lighting will have its effect, as will the colour.
 
If circumstances permit, I would put the camera on a tripod and use a delayed release of 2 seconds to avoid camera shake. Then I would take a few shots with automatic exposure and set varying degrees of under exposure with the exposure compensation control and select the best ones when I can see the images properly on a big screen later.

If you have to work handheld, the camera will often have a scene mode for handheld night-time pictures which should produce reasonable results.

-R
 
pretty much most of my night city-scapes are at f/8 to f/11 and anything from 10s to 30s.....and always on tripod of course. I want as much sharpness I can get front to back hence the f/8 to f/11 and without having to use the bulb setting (most cameras max out at 30s then you have to use bulb and a remote) The benefit of the long exposure on water or in the sky is the smoothing effect, and also people tend to disappear from the photo if they are moving, Light trails also add something.

30s at f/22 and iso 100

9732532909_20fcff1d3b_z.jpg

Light Trails 12/09/2013 by petach123 (Peter Tachauer), on Flickr

30s at f/9 iso 200

9605043774_5ff14f68d0_z.jpg

Circular Quay Sydney by petach123 (Peter Tachauer), on Flickr
 
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