Night shots - C&C please

[EleanorW]

Pictures were taken on the bulb setting, iso100, F8. First time I've tried a long exposure at night.

1

2

3

 

[max3k]

#3 is my fav. could have used a little more DOF. maybe f11-13?

 

[manaheim]

Pretty damned good from an overall technical perspective. Now you just want to look for some more interesting subjects and/or crop existing ones to make it work better (such as in long city skylines- too much dead space in that one).

You have some tilted horizons, and it looks like you missed focus on #1 (always manual focus with a night shot such as these, and at that range manual focus to infinity on your lense)

Other than that I'd say you're leagues ahead of most people doing night photography. It's a tricky subject and usually people bugger it up pretty bad the first several times.

You didn't commit some of the usual errors:

- underexposure (always overexpose slightly and back down in PP)
- white balance issues (either you shot raw or got it close on composition- by the way, always shoot raw at night)
- no tripod (i assume you had one)
- no remote shutter release (I assume you had one)

Some other tricks you can try:

1. Stop down a hair more to get star effect on the light points... each lens is different... most lenses do it nicely from F8-F11. You don't want to go too far as it will cause a lot of refraction that will mar the image.
2. Do a lock-up on your mirror before the exposure to cut down camera shake even more.

Keep at it!

 

[Josh66]

Excellent!

I'm not one to pick on the technical aspects too much, but I don't see anything that looks off anyway.

They all look good.

I *might* have composed #2 differently, but I can't say without seeing what's on the sides...

Good work.