Help, where am I going wrong?

imagesliveon

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Hi Guys,

I asked over on the digital section for some advice with regards to shooting this night scene. Sadly after 24hrs no responses.

Overall I am happy with the shot however there are several areas on the photo that are blown out. The highest building on the right has a bright light on top with HSBC however you cant see the HSBC which is in red letters.

I took numerous photos using a range of shutter speeds and apertures from totally wide open downwards. All the pictures I took have the lights all looking a little blown.

What can I do to improve this?

What do you guys think of the photo in general? Its my first serious attempt at a night scene!

Originally a RAW file with slight editing..

Kind Regards
Simon

IMG_9113.jpg


:hail::hail::hail::hail:
 
BTW, is there any better way to post an image other than photobucket as is seems to slightly lower the quality??

Regards
 
I'd shoot during the blue hour or more like the blue 5 minutes. The 15-30 minutes time right after sunset usually. The sky will be a nice dark blue which will add some color to your night shot. Sometimes going on a day with a few more clouds in the sky helps to add to the photo.

Remember your photo rules too. Look for leading lines to lead the eye to the buildings such as bridges or piers or interesting foreground objects for perspective will help to make the photo much more interesting.
 
To get rid of the blown spots you can HDR or bracket and mask the other parts in.
 
Photobucket is not color managed and will mess with images. Use Flickr instead.
What city is that?
 
You don't include any exposure info, but judging from some diffraction spikes and general soft focus you used a small lens aperture making the negative impact of diffraction effects an issue.

I've been using Photobucket and Flickr for years with zero issues, but don't much care for the high school blog project that got a C- feel Flicker has.

Color management issues are more often caused at the users end.

You now know the Digital Discussion forum was the wrong place to post it. I will delete that thread since there are no responses to it.
 
Last edited:
you can use GND filters at night too...
 
What do you think of the edit?

I lit up the sky a little, sharpened it, cropped it, and made the colors pop a little more.

$IMG_9113.jpg
 
Thanks,

Expo was

Shutter: 13 seconds
Aperture: 8
ISO: 50
Evaluative Metering
White Balance: Auto
Focal length 24mm

Taken on Canon 5DmkII with 24-105

I just noticed "Picture Style" was on Portrait... Doubt that makes a massive difference.

I kept the ISO as low as possible as I tend to get too much noise..

Im going back to the same location tonight. Can you guys suggest different settings?

Kind Regards...

Oh and thanks guys loved the edits...
 
A few things to consider.

When you're shooting at night, the difference between the bright lights and the dark surroundings is extreme, and is usually outside the dynamic range of the camera, so capturing both the dark and the bright stuff is very difficult, and is why HDR is often used in these situations.

Shooting at night also means skyglow, which is the overall light of the city reflecting off the haze in the atmosphere or the clouds. Depending on the light sources, you may be dealing with sodium yellow, or high-pressure mercury arcs, or any number of other light sources with relatively narrow spectrums. To avoid those issues, shooting at dusk, while there is still some light in the sky, usually allows for a more natural looking sky, and also reduces the brightness disparity between the lights of the city and the surroundings.

In these kind of shots, WB is very difficult to get right. A good way to handle it would be to shoot in RAW, and include a white object in at least one of your shots to serve as a white calibration point. Then in doing your post-processing, you could use the custom WB tool of your editing program to set the WB according to your white object. It's better than guessing, but you may still need to play around with the colour temperature, etc. to get something that looks good.

Edit: Pictures styles have no effect on the RAW, just on the enclosed JPG. So if you are processing from RAW, the picture style you had on your camera is not relevant.
 
Pgriz,

Thanks for the response!

I'm a lot happier with the last picture I posted. It was just the blown looking signs were spoiling the photo! IMHO

Kind regards
 

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