I'm New! Help with night pictures! D100

[NuggetCB7]

hey everyone, im new to the forum and just getting into photography. i have a pretty strong background to photoshop but when it comes to the Gun (camera), sadly i would like to admit, im a newb haha.

Yesterday a friend and myself decided to take some photo's of our vehicles at about 9:30-10:00pm (darkness). I've seen some amazing night time pictures that have been takin using natural light and i wanted to try it out myself BUT the results are BAD. they came out fuzzy as hell but definitly looked good on the screen of the camera but not on the computer.

The settings on my camera were:

Nikon D100
-S on the left spindle

Nikon AF Nikkor 24-120mm
-set of 22 for auto focus

I HOPE THAT HELPS?

here is how the pictures turned out

any tip will help me out at this point as you can see haha. Thanks in Advance.

 

[neea]

I dont know what -S on the left spindle means.
A Nikon thing maybe?

What was your shutter speed, aperature, and ISO?
Were you using a tripod?

I'm not very good at night shots either (it's an obstable im currently trying to overcome though)

But it looks like you need a slower shutter speed.

 

[NuggetCB7]

i was thinking that it might be the sutter speed. doesn't look like a great amount of light got in and no i wasn't using a trip pod, another problem there. i couldn't keep my hands steady long enough to prevent a blurry picture. Any Nikon guys out there can help me? i honestly dont know how to adjust the shutter speed i just started spinning the spindle around and it opened the shutter right up. sorry if this is a stupid question but i'll admit it, im a NEWBIE. haha

 

[Garbz]

Yep. S on the left spindle means single shot, as opposed to continuous. (Correct me if I'm wrong D100 users I assume it's very similar to the D200). The settings should be on a little LCD screen on the other side of the camera where it should show a P A S or M.

The problem here is the dynamic range. The headlights give off a lot of light and overpower any other non-existent light. The options are to overpower them by parking the car under a streetlight, and turning the headlights on low, or photographing the car earlier, about an hour or two after sunset when there's still twilight light available to light the scene.

 

[NuggetCB7]

thanks for the help garbz, definitly helped me out. here are some images that i took recently of a friends car. i was using a 16mm nikon nikkor fisheye lense on some of them as well as a Nikon SB 600 flash. Any comments or tips would be greatly appriciated. Im new to the photography scene so anything would help! Thanks!

www.flickr.com/photos/kempnguyen