Night Photography with my new A6000

[CBubolz343]

i live in NYC and I'm new to photography. I want to get a nice photo of lower Manhattan and the 9/11 lights this week. What are the best settings and techniques for capturing a great shot like this at night? I have a Sony A6000 with the 16-50 3.5-5.6 lens. I'm sure I'll do some experimenting, but I'd like to know how to get in the ball park and learn from the collective experience here.

thanks for your time!

-Chris

 

[MarsObserver]

i live in NYC and I'm new to photography. I want to get a nice photo of lower Manhattan and the 9/11 lights this week. What are the best settings and techniques for capturing a great shot like this at night? I have a Sony A6000 with the 16-50 3.5-5.6 lens. I'm sure I'll do some experimenting, but I'd like to know how to get in the ball park and learn from the collective experience here.

thanks for your time!

-Chris

Welcome to the very addictive world of night photography!

A few tips and tricks here: https://marsweekly.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/night-photography-a-beginners-guide-and-10-tips-tricks/

--
http://marsweekly.wordpress.com/

 

[CBubolz343]

i live in NYC and I'm new to photography. I want to get a nice photo of lower Manhattan and the 9/11 lights this week. What are the best settings and techniques for capturing a great shot like this at night? I have a Sony A6000 with the 16-50 3.5-5.6 lens. I'm sure I'll do some experimenting, but I'd like to know how to get in the ball park and learn from the collective experience here.

thanks for your time!

-Chris

Welcome to the very addictive world of night photography!

A few tips and tricks here: https://marsweekly.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/night-photography-a-beginners-guide-and-10-tips-tricks/

 

[cooldadio]

i live in NYC and I'm new to photography. I want to get a nice photo of lower Manhattan and the 9/11 lights this week. What are the best settings and techniques for capturing a great shot like this at night? I have a Sony A6000 with the 16-50 3.5-5.6 lens. I'm sure I'll do some experimenting, but I'd like to know how to get in the ball park and learn from the collective experience here.

thanks for your time!

-Chris

Try long exposures with the A setting at various f-stops, tripod of course. Not sure how bright the light are where you are shooting so bracket a lot. You can also try with M setting. Stop down aperture, start f-16 or more for best depth-of field.

 

[CBubolz343]

Thanks. Tried 30" exposure with f22 last night. Was still pretty bright. Have to mess with things a bit still. It's very bright at night here in NYC. I'm thinking that a ND filter is important, but I don't have one yet. I'll post so,e attempts here and hope for some feedback.

thanks again!

 

[Marky12]

Thanks. Tried 30" exposure with f22 last night. Was still pretty bright. Have to mess with things a bit still. It's very bright at night here in NYC. I'm thinking that a ND filter is important, but I don't have one yet. I'll post so,e attempts here and hope for some feedback.

thanks again!

Did you lower your iso also? If not, try iso 100 and f16. F22 maybe too low for a sharp shot.
--

李 宝 華

Explore 李 宝 華’s 273 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

 

[zackiedawg]

Thanks. Tried 30" exposure with f22 last night. Was still pretty bright. Have to mess with things a bit still. It's very bright at night here in NYC. I'm thinking that a ND filter is important, but I don't have one yet. I'll post so,e attempts here and hope for some feedback.

thanks again!

As mentioned above, did you remember to manually set your ISO to 100? Fix that ISO nice and low, then experiment with how long of an exposure you can get away with at your desired aperture. In bright city light conditions, you'll probably want to stop down a bit, but F22 shouldn't really be needed - I'd probably look to be in the F10-16 range, making sure ISO is at 100, and then going with a shorter exposure in the 15-20 second range if 30 seconds is still blowing out.

Also, if you're shooting JPG rather than RAW already, you might consider using the HDR function in the camera. It works extremely well when shooting buildings at night where you have very bright lights surrounded by very dark areas and night sky. Set the HDR to level 3 or so, then set your exposure to something a little more moderate like F8 to F10, ISO100, and 15 seconds. The camera will proceed to take 3 exposures at around 7 seconds, 15 seconds, and 22 seconds (3 stops apart), and blend them together into a single frame so the shadow, midtone, and highlight exposures are all blended. You'll actually get 2 photos - one will be your original single frame, and the other the blended exposure.

 

[bravomail]

My advice for NYC night shooting - don't get mugged!

 

[DezM]

My advice for NYC night shooting - don't get mugged!

Not good advice. It's actually very safe in NYC. Don't believe the stereotype

 

[Christopher Chan Sydney]

i live in NYC and I'm new to photography. I want to get a nice photo of lower Manhattan and the 9/11 lights this week. What are the best settings and techniques for capturing a great shot like this at night? I have a Sony A6000 with the 16-50 3.5-5.6 lens. I'm sure I'll do some experimenting, but I'd like to know how to get in the ball park and learn from the collective experience here.

thanks for your time!

-Chris

My recommendation is to take a look on Flickr for some photos that are similar to what you plan on capturing and look at the settings that were used for those photos. For example, take a look at these photos .

If you click on the individual photos, in the majority of the cases, you can see what the camera settings were. Look on the right side of the page, underneath the photo.

regards,

Chris

 

[CBubolz343]

My advice for NYC night shooting - don't get mugged!

Not good advice. It's actually very safe in NYC. Don't believe the stereotype

--
Dez
http://dezsantana.com

Hahaha! I've actually lived here for fifteen years, so I'm not too worried! It's, I believe, the safest big city in the country. Everyone come visit!

 

[CBubolz343]

i live in NYC and I'm new to photography. I want to get a nice photo of lower Manhattan and the 9/11 lights this week. What are the best settings and techniques for capturing a great shot like this at night? I have a Sony A6000 with the 16-50 3.5-5.6 lens. I'm sure I'll do some experimenting, but I'd like to know how to get in the ball park and learn from the collective experience here.

thanks for your time!

-Chris

My recommendation is to take a look on Flickr for some photos that are similar to what you plan on capturing and look at the settings that were used for those photos. For example, take a look at these photos .

If you click on the individual photos, in the majority of the cases, you can see what the camera settings were. Look on the right side of the page, underneath the photo.

regards,

Chris

Great idea! I did that last night and did some experimenting. I found that things were blown out a bit and someone suggested I check ISO. Sure enough, I had left it on auto and had an ISO of 1000! Going to try some more tests tonight. Hopefully I can get things figured in the next few days so I can get pics of these lights over this long weekend.

Thanks again for for all the advice, everyone!

 

[CBubolz343]

The next trick is figuring out how to access bulb mode. I downloaded the touch less shutter and was thinking I could use that in bulb mode. Some of the pics I saw on Flickr used two and six min exposures.

 

[macmaster05]

The next trick is figuring out how to access bulb mode. I downloaded the touch less shutter and was thinking I could use that in bulb mode. Some of the pics I saw on Flickr used two and six min exposures.

For bulb mode you have to be in Manual and scroll your shutter speed wheel all the way to the left to reach BULB.

Get a remote. Its worth it.

 

[DezM]

My advice for NYC night shooting - don't get mugged!

Not good advice. It's actually very safe in NYC. Don't believe the stereotype

--
Dez
http://dezsantana.com

Hahaha! I've actually lived here for fifteen years, so I'm not too worried! It's, I believe, the safest big city in the country. Everyone come visit!

I'm born and raised in NYC.

And yes, good advice

 

[CBubolz343]

My advice for NYC night shooting - don't get mugged!

Not good advice. It's actually very safe in NYC. Don't believe the stereotype

--
Dez
http://dezsantana.com

Hahaha! I've actually lived here for fifteen years, so I'm not too worried! It's, I believe, the safest big city in the country. Everyone come visit!

I'm born and raised in NYC.

And yes, good advice

--
Dez
http://dezsantana.com

Just looked at your site, Dez. Beautiful photos! I love taking my daughter to Janes Carousel, so many of this vantage points are familiar.

 

[DezM]

My advice for NYC night shooting - don't get mugged!

Not good advice. It's actually very safe in NYC. Don't believe the stereotype

--
Dez
http://dezsantana.com

Hahaha! I've actually lived here for fifteen years, so I'm not too worried! It's, I believe, the safest big city in the country. Everyone come visit!

I'm born and raised in NYC.

And yes, good advice

--
Dez
http://dezsantana.com

Just looked at your site, Dez. Beautiful photos! I love taking my daughter to Janes Carousel, so many of this vantage points are familiar.

Thank you. We have alot of photo opportunities, as you know.