D5000 Night Landscape Tips for a Newbie

[JFK]

Hi all,

I've had my D5000 for a few years now but never really got to grips with. Still using the stock lens.

I just took a couple of nighttime scenery view photos of the city and they looked pretty poor.

I used a tripod and used the timer on the shutter. I tried using the default night mode. Then did a couple on the S setting for about 5 seconds.

They looked pretty grainy. But also the subject, i.e. the buildings are quite far away and couldn't zoom in much on them.

Any time on taking a good nighttime shot of something far away with this camera?

Thanks!

 

[Braineack]

What ISO were they shot at?

You missed the focus in the first...that helps as well.

 

[CouncilmanDoug]

get a cheap remote, and then with a d5000 sensor you're probably not gonna want to go over iso 800, on nightscapes like the one you shot the exposure time can be really long and it doesn't matter, so just do a longer exposure with low iso and somewhere around f8 or so.

 

[CaptainNapalm]

You need to ensure two things:

Your ISO is as low as possible (if you're using a tripod there is no reason to be shooting at higher than 100 ISO, just lengthen the shutter speed to compensate; and
Ensure you don't miss focus (for shots like above, before I even set up, I lock the focus on the well lit portion of one of the buildings and then keep it locked there, even if slightly recomposing, otherwise your camera might start hunting for focus or miss the focus since it's dark out). Also, use a remote trigger if you can to eliminate possibility of motion blur which can happen when physically pressing the shutter button.

 

[Tailgunner]

You need to ensure two things:

Your ISO is as low as possible (if you're using a tripod there is no reason to be shooting at higher than 100 ISO, just lengthen the shutter speed to compensate; and
Ensure you don't miss focus (for shots like above, before I even set up, I lock the focus on the well lit portion of one of the buildings and then keep it locked there, even if slightly recomposing, otherwise your camera might start hunting for focus or miss the focus since it's dark out). Also, use a remote trigger if you can to eliminate possibility of motion blur which can happen when physically pressing the shutter button.

This, although I tend to shoot cityscapes around ISO 200.

The distance isn't really an issue either. You got the makings of a good shot, you just need to work on your settings and setup. This is where a tripod and remote shutter button as mentioned above will come in handy. Depending on my F-stop setting, I would probably hold my remote shutter button about 3-5 secs on the above photos. Then I would try and clean it up in post processing…add some contrast and sharpness.