New night photos from zoo! CC greatly Appreciated

[Ethang]

Hey everyone. Last night my zoo had a holiday night lighting event that I brought my camera to. I had some greatly difficulty considering it was at night and I used my nikon d3000 with my tamron 70-300 VC (4-5.6 F) without an external flash. A lot of my photos looked, well, bleh but I think some of my shots came out alright. I spot metered so my camera wouldn't want to use a 30 second exposure when using a semi-automatic mode, and because I was walking around with my family, I couldn't use full manual and spend 5 minutes trying to get the exposure right. I set my iso to 1600 because it was dark, and if i bumbed up my iso any higher on my camera it would look unusably grainy. CC would be greatly appreciated.
panorama stitched with hugin: DSC_0101-DSC_0106 by Ethang13, on Flickr

And which flag shot do you like better? and why (if you like either, if not please explain) CC is appreciated:
A:
DSC_0262 by Ethang13, on Flickr

B:
DSC_0264 by Ethang13, on Flickr

 

[Cfitz]

There's seems to be way to much, just blackness at the top of 2 and without looking at 2 you can't really tell what 3 is...

 

[thereyougo!]

Most important thing with shots like these: Shoot earlier! Within 30 minutes of sunset is best. You may well have bulb setting also which will help if you have a cable release or remote. The lights get lost in the darkness otherwise. You've also cut off part of the giraffe. This could be avoided by shooting in portrait mode before stitching. Most important thing though is if you are going to have a lot of sky, you need the sky to still have some colour.

 

[Ethang]

Thanks for the advice.
Cfitz: Do you think I should make a titer crop in PP or should have I zoomed in more with my camera? Also I kinda see what your saying about 3. It's tough for me to dicier things like that when i took the photo.
thereyougo: The lights opened at 7:00- already dark. Also I don't have a tripod- therefore I could't use my bulb setting. I did use portrait setting when shooting the pano, but do to my lack of tripod + novice pano shooting skills + poor pano software the top of the giraffe ended up getting cut off. I see what your seeing about sky color, except if the sky still had color wouldn't the lights look to dark? I have never really shot anything like this before so please excuse my lack of knowledge about it.
Thanks again.

 

[orejon555]

U actually like the way the 2nd picture came out.. I think it looks awesome

 

[rexbobcat]

I like the last two photos. I'm not a big fan of the 1st, because the crop is too tight, and the lights are so small that even though the animals are recognizable, there is just too much dead space.

The last one looks like it's a fountain spewing out patriotism. I think it's a nice abstract.

 

[photo guy]

photo 1 is not too bad though some of the lights really didn't show up. The flags are another issue, were the winds that fast or did you have your shutter speed too fast for this as they both are extremely blurry (even the pole is blurry)?

 

[MTVision]

photo 1 is not too bad though some of the lights really didn't show up. The flags are another issue, were the winds that fast or did you have your shutter speed too fast for this as they both are extremely blurry (even the pole is blurry)?

I'm assuming the OP was being creative with the flag shots.

Also, a fast shutter speed stops motion whereas a slow shutter speed can cause blur