how to shoot/edit nice cityscapes at night?

[pavelbarchuk]

How does one shoot cities at night without overexposing highlights, like light inside buildings and not underexposing dark, non lighted areas? Also not having light streaks. I can shoot nice photos of cities, but pretty much all the lights are blown out if u zoom in on them. I've seen some really nice photos before that look perfect, but im sure theres more to it than taking one shot and a bunch of editing.

I normally shoot cityscapes at iso 100, f9 to f11, 15-30 sec exposure. If I shoot it in aperture priority, its too bright, so than I go into manual and shoot it 5 seconds less...

How do you guys shoot cityscapes? Any helpful advice?

I have a nikon d800 and use the nikon 14-24 lens and occasionally the 70-200 for night cityscapes.

 

[Tailgunner]

How does one shoot cities at night without overexposing highlights, like light inside buildings and not underexposing dark, non lighted areas? Also not having light streaks. I can shoot nice photos of cities, but pretty much all the lights are blown out if u zoom in on them. I've seen some really nice photos before that look perfect, but im sure theres more to it than taking one shot and a bunch of editing.

I normally shoot cityscapes at iso 100, f9 to f11, 15-30 sec exposure. If I shoot it in aperture priority, its too bright, so than I go into manual and shoot it 5 seconds less...

How do you guys shoot cityscapes? Any helpful advice?

I have a nikon d800 and use the nikon 14-24 lens and occasionally the 70-200 for night cityscapes.

You got any examples you can post?

I'm not sure of your shooting distance, you could be too far away for the 14-24 lens causing shallow dof. I used a wide angle once for a cityscape and my shots seemed shallow.

Anyhow, you may could benefit from stoping down a little more...like F/14-16. The D800 has a larger sensor and shouldn't deflect as much as say my D7100 at smaller F-stops. I also think I recall someone saying it was better to shoot slightly over exposed. This protects a lot of highlights and you can always add shadowing later. I can't recall for sure. I generally shoot around F/8-11 but will move out to F/14-16 when I'm further away from the subject.