POTM [03/08] Nightscape

(click for large version)

f/5, iso800, 10 seconds @ 18mm

Had a real hard time with this months theme as night photography is not my cup of tea. I hope you like the result.

 

Love it.

 

Thanks! This was shot about an hour ago by the way Last minute out shooting before the potm closes this month. Thought I'd better go and at least give it a few tries

 

Beautiful.

 

Thanks yoda.
From looking at your shots what do you do to measure light or avoid burn-out when doing these night shots? All manual or?

I'm having a hard time with this night photography. Especially since a 30 sec exposure takes the camera 30+ secs to save to the flash... which makes it extremely time consuming to trial and error in the freezing night. Also I'm having a lot of trouble with focus... that is extremely difficult I think. This one was shot using AF on the lights in the distance... My manual night shots look like s**t. Again I'm not able to use the diopter to focus due to my gigantic heavy army grade glasses Or is there a trick?
I was out shooting alone by the way. I guess having someone point a torch at the subject and then using AF would otherwise have been a solution.

 

For focus I use auto, focus then recompose if necessary. My eyesight is pretty good so that helps when looking through the viewfinder.

For shutter and aperture it's all manual, but I'll take maybe 5 shots at slightly different exposures and pick the best.
Basically quite a bit of trial and error.

 

Fantastic