First Nightshot C&C

Diffuser · Feb 16, 2012

I've been out several times at night the past weeks and while the shots looked ok'ish on LCD, once home, big disappointments

So after a lot of reading and testing, this evening I think I had for the first time some tiny sort of success, at least I start to like what I see.

Here a picture of the Dubai Skyline, taken from a pier out of Jumeirah Public Beach. From what I experience, the light before complete darkness have been the nicest ones.

I was a bit gutted when I found out later that I had spot metering on. There is a small white building right center of the picture which has good lighting and is quite sharp
compared to the other buildings. Is that because it's closer or how much impact has the spot metering on this. How would the picture look with evaluative metering?

If you have good suggestions, I'll go back tomorrow evening and fine tune the settings.

Also, at time I think the line and buoy in front are distracting, then I think it actually looks interesting. In any case, I couldn't crop it out and keep ratio. Practicing on this.

Exposure 6.0 sec at f/13, Focal Lenght 22mm, ISO 200, Manual, Metering Pattern, Canon 60D

This shot of the sunset and birds I took before and are pleased with the composition. Trying to keep rule of thirds in mind, I thought the position of the sun
in top right corner connects nicely with the main subject. I liked the colors, there has been quite some wind today, hence making the Dubai sky sandy, the
sun hardly came through and it was a very short sunset.

I had prepared for the night shot before, then I saw the birds and forgot about it. So this was taken in Infinity. Can't be the way to go? :raisedbrow:

Exposure 1/125 sec at f/18, Focal Lengh 72mm, ISO 200, Aperture Priority, Metering Spot, Canon 60D

Appreciate any thoughts or recommendations you might want to share.

Heitz · Feb 16, 2012

These are nice. I might crop out the buoy and line in the first shot, but that might alter the aspect ratio of the pic

rexbobcat · Feb 16, 2012

The first one seems a bit washed out. It doesn't really look like night time to me. It's nice though. I just think it could benefit from a little more contrast.

DiskoJoe · Feb 16, 2012

POst the exif data for the shot(s). But from just what is here some extra contrast and saturation would not hurt. Would probably bring out the light reflections on the water more. I would try to zoom past where the buoy is. Really distracting. A larger size would be nice too. Cant really tell much about the details but it looks a bit soft. Could just be compression though.

One2 · Feb 16, 2012

Pretty nice photos. On the second one you used spot metering. What did you meter off of?

Diffuser · Feb 16, 2012

rexbobcat said:
The first one seems a bit washed out. It doesn't really look like night time to me. It's nice though. I just think it could benefit from a little more contrast.

Yes, should actually be named an evening photo ;-)

How to get more sharpness? I had spot metering by accident and will go back setting evaluative metering.

But there it ends at this moment with my little wisdom of what else to change. I have played around with quite a lot of different settings / exposures.

Diffuser · Feb 16, 2012

One2 said:
Pretty nice photos. On the second one you used spot metering. What did you meter off of?

Thanks. I metered on the birds.

Diffuser · Feb 16, 2012

DiskoJoe said:
POst the exif data for the shot(s). But from just what is here some extra contrast and saturation would not hurt. Would probably bring out the light reflections on the water more. I would try to zoom past where the buoy is. Really distracting. A larger size would be nice too. Cant really tell much about the details but it looks a bit soft. Could just be compression though.

Thanks for your reply. I've post edited a bit, but am a little scared to not overdue this.
Good to see you find the buoy 'really' distracting. I keep that in mind.

ps: I've added the exif to the original post

Diffuser · Feb 16, 2012

DiskoJoe said:
POst the exif data for the shot(s). But from just what is here some extra contrast and saturation would not hurt. Would probably bring out the light reflections on the water more. I would try to zoom past where the buoy is. Really distracting. A larger size would be nice too. Cant really tell much about the details but it looks a bit soft. Could just be compression though.

Would this be better? Actually, the longer I look/work on it, the blurrier it gets, what a difference from raw to jpeg to photobucket to here ;-)