Night building lanscape exposure

I'm a newb, just aqcuired a d7000 with 18-200 VR. I'm still getting my head around the very basics. In this shot, given that I was using a tripod, I figure the ISO was much too high (some noise). So I'm going to go revisit the site, though someone might have some pointers/suggestions? (The red cast also bugs me)

Same with the below, which took a lot of photoshopping but still doesn't feel right, though not sure what's bothering me :-?

How would one set white-balance for such scenes?





Thanks

"I'm still getting my head around the very basics. In this shot, given that I was using a tripod, I figure the ISO was much too high (some noise). So I'm going to go revisit the site, though someone might have some pointers/suggestions? (The red cast also bugs me)...Same with the below, which took a lot of photoshopping but still doesn't feel right, though not sure what's bothering me :-? How would one set white-balance for such scenes?"....................

Slow down!

By your admission you are very new at this, and it is obvious you need to read your manual thoroughly (and keep referring to it) as well as doing some reading on camera and photography BASICS.

• for shots like this do not use autopilot, er, auto-ISO
• learn to take a good photo to begin with before you spend a lot of time 'photoshopping' the heck out of it
• your camera manual covers WB; you can adjust it yes, while shooting, leave it and accept what your camera software comes up with, or correct later, especially with RAW files

uhm, thanks, I think...

Have been spending a lot of time with the bundled manual and experimenting (in the three days since I started) but finding its not quite enough, any suggestions for good books (or how to identify them) then?

"uhm, thanks, I think... ....Have been spending a lot of time with the bundled manual and experimenting (in the three days since I started) but finding its not quite enough, any suggestions for good books (or how to identify them) then?"..................

First, I actually like your composition for the second image!
Secondly, at least you seem interested in leaning, and that's very good.

No, the manual is not a quick photography course, but for today's very complex cameras it is essential learning. And I doubt that anyone really knows every nuance of some of these DSLRs. The camera is like a toolbox, with endless tools and options, and mostly we use and learn the ones we need at the time.

I would suggest you practice with 'normal' photos in daylight, preferably on a nice day with good lighting.

As far as 'good books', I personally learned 'the basics' when film cameras were still completely manual, so we had to learn, and mistakes were costly as in wasted film, etc. But I have (had to) kept pace by continual reading, testing, and shooting.

Another often overlooked 'resource' is a photography Club. Photo clubs vary but most will provide some form of critique as well as reference and motivation/inspiration.

I would highly recommend Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure . It covers the basics of photography and what is necessary to capture an exposure that is not only technically correct but "creatively correct." Once you can expose correctly it becomes much easier to start to think about composition and the rest of the less hardware oriented elements of photography.

Oh, I should have also mentioned I like the composition in that second photo as well. The building has a cool sort of dual personality going on, but the traffic light in the right half keeps that part of the image from feeling 'empty'.

As far as camera settings there, your exposure was at 5/8" which is in the danger zone for losing sharpness due to mirror slap. Just before the photo the camera raises the mirror extremely quickly and this can cause some minor vibration in the body. In my experience I've seen a little loss of sharpness between 1/30" and 1/2". I would recommend shooting in an exposure delay mode which raises the mirror, pauses, and then trips the shutter about half a second later. This helps your camera settle down before recording an exposure. With good camera setup discipline you can safely move into much longer exposures.

An approximately equivalent exposure for your second shot would have been f/8, iso 200, 15" shutter. As long as your tripod is solid you would end up with a much cleaner shot that way.

As for the color - for night shots definitely shoot RAW. This allows you to adjust the white balance later. Create the best mental image of the scene that you can, then when you're sitting in front of your computer tweak it to look the same. Sometimes a slight yellow cast lends more realism to a nighttime city shot.

Another excellent exercise is to set a manual white balance. Refer to your manual to see how. Bring along something that is a neutral tint; most photo stores sell grey cards that are perfectly neutral. On the other hand, I often use a white piece of paper or anything else white I can get my hands on. People will ridicule this approach saying that paper can have a slight color cast to it that throws off your shots but I've often found paper perfectly adequate for architecture or cityscape shots at night where everything is so far off anyway that you're getting much closer to reality if you have something that's "pretty much white". You could also try the tungsten or fluorescent settings on your camera and see how those look.

Here's a shot I took - longer exposure, lower iso, smaller aperture.

Here is an example and my thought process for a rehearsal dinner I did last night. I just wanted to get the hotel it was being held at...Nothing major...

-Thought about what I was after with the shot. I wanted to show some life and a vibrant atmosphere....

-With that in mind I knew I wanted a long exposure. I used ISO 100 and set my f/stop to f/8..Plugged that in my light meter and got the exposure...

-I then bracketed my shots with +1 -1 and normal......

-I framed how I thought I would like it and started shooting knowing that no matter what...editing would be involved so I got everything in the scene I knww I wanted. I try to frame right the first time but editing is a major part of my workflow and most others….

I thought about HDR or using a single exposure.........

These are all unedited brackets to give an example.....Then a quick HDR shot that is a bit over the top…. Again just examples of how to start thinking about what you want out of the shots....and then using your settings to get a certain result……

Thanks

Rusty, I'm curious what lens you were using and how high off the ground you were shooting from, I notice the verticals are pretty vertical?

Andre SC said:

Thanks

Rusty, I'm curious what lens you were using and how high off the ground you were shooting from, I notice the verticals are pretty vertic

Click to expand...

The camera was about a foot off the ground point straight up...

I used the Canon 15-85 (great lens).....

When taking building shots with a wide angle lens I always like to keep the camera as low to the ground as I can. It gives it a good perspective.

Just keep at it and you will figure things out. Just think about the shot you want and how to obtain that.

Good Luck

Take 2, it was hoz'n down with rain, only getting worse and already 1am, so I packed up and went home without really having gotten what I was after. I wonder how weather-proof the camera is, but not keen to take chances.





maybe time to disclose my actual intent with these shots are of a more conceptual-art nature, using digital-darkroom style multiple exposures to overlay and average many images into what becomes a type of post-digital-painterly-abstraction (probably not most photographer's cup-of-tea, i realise)

(don't have anything against over-the-top ;-) )

For shots like these, I like to shoot in RAW (which I do almost exclusively anyway). Sometimes you get mixed light sources like mercury-vapor and other warmer lights and it's very difficult, if not impossible to perfectly color correct in PP. Just start with daylight balanced and adjust from there as needed. Inevitably someone is going to look at the picture and say it looks warm on this side and green on the other, but what if it looks that way when you're standing in front of it? The reason you choose it for a subject in the first place was probably because it looked good that way. Don't try to fix what isn't necessarily broke.

good argument, thanks