Night time C&C

Right, its been ages since I was doing any proper photography and today I was messing about with white balance and exposure. I was asked to take pictures for some people and during the day I was (and the people were) quite happy with the results. However, I can't seem to get it together for night photography.

I know that these pictures kind of lack focus points, but I think I underexposed all of them too much, yet when I went for less underexposure, I was getting noise and messy shots. These were shot by hand from my hotel balcony which wasn't a help but can anyone comment on how to improve, either by better shot construction of by PP? (I shot RAW (well, .nef) for the first time tonight so will be messing about with those files later).

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Rainbowsend

Are you using auto iso? The reason I ask is if you leave the camera to choose the iso setting it will bump it up for night shots, I dont know what camera you are using but some are not great over 800iso, always use a tripod for night photography this will allow you to lengthen the shutter speed and you will then be able to keep the iso down to say 200 which should give you little or no noise.

I was using 400 ISO and didn't have a tripod to hand.

A lot of the 'noise' was just the ambient light coming from the buildings which was softening and messing up the pictures, hence I was trying to cut that out by underexposing.

Rainbowsend

Are the pictures you put up un-processed raw files? If they are then you will be able to bring them up no problem with a bit of pp.

Nope, they are the JPEGs. Have just started looking into how to work with raw files.

Rainbowsend

I think the softness is just down to camera shake, they dont look particularly noisy (at that size anyway) almost impossible to get a sharp hand held at night unless you have a very fast lens. Give RAW a go, I know the files take up more space but the benefits far outway the disadvantage of that.

red_ice

I love that little spot of light there on number 4, looks savage!


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This might be a new catchphrase for me, but that looks like it wants tilt shifting... for the craic like :pac:
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FoxT

The exposure in all of them looks about right to me, you'll start blowing highlights if you expose any more than you have done. They look a little noisy, but some levels/contrast adjustments on the RAW files should help enormously here. Also you could try Noise reduction software like Noise Ninja ( Havent tried that myself but seems good ) From my own experience I would suggest the following:

- No tripod? Find something (anything, windowsill, railing, etc) to rest the camera on. this will make a big improvement, and should allow you to drop back from ISO 400 to 200 or even 100.

- If the camera has a setting for long exposure noise reduction, then use it.

- If using high ISOs, I find my 40D responds very well to about a 1/3 stop overexposure, other cameras might too, worth a try.

Cheers, FoxT

Borderfox

If they are in RAW when you are converting just raise the black level and it will correct most of the problems you describe..

Thanks guys.

I'm planning on doing a little walk about one of these nights as there are some amazing buildings around the place. I am just trying to get the hang of under / over exposing and all that before I go out!