Night-time C&C

sprinkles

I've recently bought a decent tripod so I decided this weekend to get out and try and use it. Thankfully there was a good bit going on just down the road from me...

The main problem I found was gauging the light metering. I eventually settled on what the camera was telling me was underexposed. Also, the city gave an overly orange/yellow hue - far more than I was expecting. I've messed about with some post processing so far and it's turned out ok but in general what am I doing wrong? Is there any typical setup that people use for night time photography (city landscapes in particular) - ie should I set up a custom WB? What about the F-stop - smaller aperture/longer exposure?

Also what post processing techniques would be recommended? I did very little to them other than mess with the temp.

Some shots below:
My fav of the set


I lowered the temp on this to change the orange hue to blue


original




Original:


One last one from tonight:

paulusdu

Great captures, and i love the little running comments, good to have an idea how to achieve the same.

I take it the city in question is Vancouver?

.Longshanks.

I really like the last one, but prefer the version with a person (you?) sitting in the foreground that was posted in the random thread.
The corrected WB definitely improves the others

5uspect

Really nice. I love the mood of the final one.
They look a little heaviy sharpened but I guess that's just pix.ie.

sprinkles

5uspect wrote: »

Really nice. I love the mood of the final one.
They look a little heaviy sharpened but I guess that's just pix.ie.

I use Picasa mostly - but the photos on it tend to have a washed out look to them.... just laziness on my part tbh as it's easier to upload from iPhoto to Picasa rather than Pix.ie

paulusdu wrote: »

Great captures, and i love the little running comments, good to have an idea how to achieve the same.

I take it the city in question is Vancouver?

Thanks. Yep, Vancouver BC. The first pic is of Cypress Ski slope. There's 3 slopes you can see from the bay. The other shots are of the downtown area. They've set up the light display for the Winter Olympics. Thankfully it seems to have stopped raining (non stop for the past 3 months) so will be able to get a bit more with the camera.

Longshanks100 wrote: »

I really like the last one, but prefer the version with a person (you?) sitting in the foreground that was posted in the random thread.
The corrected WB definitely improves the others

Tis me alright. Might go back down there tonight and try out a few different settings. Going to read up a bit more about it first though...