Night skyline

[mkoop]

Wisconsin State Capitol

Still learning a lot and adjusting to fx / settings on new body, I feel like I can do much better.
Any constructive critique is appreciated. (ISO1600, 300mm, f9 0.8 sec)

AAA_0598-2 by Meriwether Kenfield, on Flickr

 

[tirediron]

Nice; I think because of how bright the capitol building is however, an HDR would work better here. Expose say, 1.5 seconds for the main scene to bring more detail out, and a just a bit less than you used here to recover some of the detail in the capitol building.

 

[jinx703x]

Lower the ISO to 100 (better quality), apature @ 11ish (so it's all in focus), 15-25 second exposure, manually focus it and toss it on a tripod. Just my .02 but nice shot!

 

[crimbfighter]

Hey hey! That looks familiar! A fellow Madisonian! It looks to me like either the image is soft from missed focus or too much cropping/too high ISO. What lens were you using?

A couple other thoughts that work well for me. As already mentioned, lower your ISO and increase your exposure time. Were you using a tripod? Try to find the sharpest aperture for that lens, use it, and adjust the shutter speed accordingly to get your exposure right. It's a nice start, thought. I've actually shot the same shoreline from the other side of Lake Monona. I used two exposures, layer masking the Capitol Dome, but even then, I still ended up with a slightly overexposed dome.

Capitol Shoreline-7 by crimbfighter, on Flickr

 

[SurvivalDad]

I agree with the tripod and longer exposure. Nice shot though.

 

[mkoop]

Hey hey! That looks familiar! A fellow Madisonian! It looks to me like either the image is soft from missed focus or too much cropping/too high ISO. What lens were you using?

A couple other thoughts that work well for me. As already mentioned, lower your ISO and increase your exposure time. Were you using a tripod? Try to find the sharpest aperture for that lens, use it, and adjust the shutter speed accordingly to get your exposure right. It's a nice start, thought. I've actually shot the same shoreline from the other side of Lake Monona. I used two exposures, layer masking the Capitol Dome, but even then, I still ended up with a slightly overexposed dome.
Capitol Shoreline-7 by crimbfighter, on Flickr

I was using my tamron 70-300 f4-5.6 at 300mm, it is really my only telephoto that works on my new fx body (just upgraded to d750 from d200). I was using a tripod, I will try lowering the iso and uping the exposure time. I am still pretty new to this so will need to look into the multiple exposures and layer masking.

For some reason when I was trying longer exposures the light was trailing somewhat. I need to figure out whats going on with that.

Lots of good input here for me to try this week, thanks!

 

[crimbfighter]

Hey hey! That looks familiar! A fellow Madisonian! It looks to me like either the image is soft from missed focus or too much cropping/too high ISO. What lens were you using?

A couple other thoughts that work well for me. As already mentioned, lower your ISO and increase your exposure time. Were you using a tripod? Try to find the sharpest aperture for that lens, use it, and adjust the shutter speed accordingly to get your exposure right. It's a nice start, thought. I've actually shot the same shoreline from the other side of Lake Monona. I used two exposures, layer masking the Capitol Dome, but even then, I still ended up with a slightly overexposed dome.
Capitol Shoreline-7 by crimbfighter, on Flickr

I was using my tamron 70-300 f4-5.6 at 300mm, it is really my only telephoto that works on my new fx body (just upgraded to d750 from d200). I was using a tripod, I will try lowering the iso and uping the exposure time. I am still pretty new to this so will need to look into the multiple exposures and layer masking.

For some reason when I was trying longer exposures the light was trailing somewhat. I need to figure out whats going on with that.

Lots of good input here for me to try this week, thanks!

Here are a couple other suggestions for you to try for long exposures on a tripod.
-Find the sharpest aperture/focal length combo and use it. Your lens might be sharper at even 270mm rather than 300mm, and therefore might produce a better image, even if cropped more. Especially with super zooms like yours, they tend to get soft right around the 300mm mark. Sometimes backing off a few mm can make a big difference.
-Does your lens have image stabilization? If so, make sure it's off when on a tripod. The IS systems can actually INTRODUCE movement because the little mechanisms inside are moving about trying to find instability even when it doesn't exist.
-Were you using a remote shutter release? If not, try one. If you don't have one, try using the timer function and set it to at least 5 seconds so the camera can settle from the pressure of pushing the shutter release before it takes the photo.
-Lastly, try using the mirror up function, which requires two presses of the shutter release. One to raise the mirror, and one to open the shutter.

Hope that helps!

 

[mkoop]

Here are a couple other suggestions for you to try for long exposures on a tripod.
-Find the sharpest aperture/focal length combo and use it. Your lens might be sharper at even 270mm rather than 300mm, and therefore might produce a better image, even if cropped more. Especially with super zooms like yours, they tend to get soft right around the 300mm mark. Sometimes backing off a few mm can make a big difference.
-Does your lens have image stabilization? If so, make sure it's off when on a tripod. The IS systems can actually INTRODUCE movement because the little mechanisms inside are moving about trying to find instability even when it doesn't exist.
-Were you using a remote shutter release? If not, try one. If you don't have one, try using the timer function and set it to at least 5 seconds so the camera can settle from the pressure of pushing the shutter release before it takes the photo.
-Lastly, try using the mirror up function, which requires two presses of the shutter release. One to raise the mirror, and one to open the shutter.

Hope that helps!

Thanks, I will work on figuring out the sharpest focal length. The lens does have image stabilization which I was using, maybe that was what was causing the issue I couldn't explain, thats a really good observation. I am using a remote so I wasn't actually in contact with the camera at all during the exposures. I kept thinking it must have been something similar to the 600 rule with stars that I was just too inexperienced to figure out. I couldn't find anything when I researched until you just clued me in on the VC, I'll do some looking into that.