metering night photography

[echoyjeff222]

Should I use spot metering in night photography if I am shooting a cityscape? I will be up on the 70th odd floor of a building shooting down into the city. If so, where should I meter?

Also, is it possible to do separate exposures for the foreground city and the sky? I wanted to try and get a longer exposure for the sky to get moving clouds. Is this easy to do in PP (is it blending?)

Oh, and one other thing: should I use wide angle or telephoto (or try both?) from this viewpoint?

Thanks!

 

[KmH]

Spot metering would not be my choice.
Depending on the scene I would use Partial, Center-weighted, or Evaluative.

You make 2 exposures: 1 for the sky and one for the city and the make a 'composite' of the 2 photos.
You can use either - wide and telephoto - that your artistic intent dictates.

 

[Tailgunner]

Spot metering would not be my choice.
Depending on the scene I would use Partial, Center-weighted, or Evaluative.

You make 2 exposures 1 for the sky and one for the city and the make a 'composite' of the 2 photos.
You can use either - wide and telephoto - that your artistic intent dictates.

Agreed, I use center-weight a lot and a mid-range or wide angle lens...telephoto if I want to add the moon.

 

[TCampbell]

You _really_ need to consider the specific scene and the reflectivity of surfaces in it. There no single formula that'll get you reliable and repeatable results.

The problem with just shooting a night scene is that the camera wants to assume that if the image were converted to b&w, that the average brightness of an object would work out to a "middle gray" tone. But night scenes are bit more into the extremes... a lot of blackness and a few really bright spots. This causes the camera meter to tend to bring up that "blackness" and that causes the highlights to be completely blown out. The black areas look muddy gray and the bright areas are blown.

If there is some ideal spot within the scene that you want to accurately expose, you *might* be able to spot meter it... but you also have to consider it's surface reflectivity. If you're metering off a black asphalt street (low reflectivity) then the camera is going to tend to over-expose that anyway... even with spot metering.

Be prepared to use the meter reading ONLY as an initial data-point and then manually control the exposure. I often find I need to shoot at least a full stop (and sometimes 2 stops) LOWER than what the meter suggests (remember... the meter is trying to make "black" look "gray" and you want your "black" to look "black".)