pls leave your C&C's

praveenk16

Hi, I recently got myself a slr camera and so much interested in night photography and here are the few pics, it would be really nice to let me know your views and suggestions, thank you all..0

They're lovely shots.

Straighten them up, and you're laughing.

Thecageyone

The only thing I would suggest is to keep your ISO down, and at f/22 you probably didn't need 30 seconds. Maybe try f/16 @ 15 seconds, ISO 100.

Nice though

CabanSail

It's much better if you post your images in the thread itself and resize them to a more managable size. The easiest way to do this is via a Photo Sharing site like Pix.ie or Flickr.

As for the shots themselves. I find all three to be quite soft. I cannot see the Exif where I am now, but it looks like the tripod isn't quite stable.

As for composition etc. Harp1 is cut off at the left which interupts the flow of the eye from the lower left corner, over the bridge and up the structure. You could try cropping the base below the reflections and straightening the image. I also think the WB is too warm as it should be a white bridge. The sky is very nice and has been caught at a good time in the evening.

Bridge 3 has a better flow but I would have liked to have seen all the span and not missed the lower left. The burnt highlights on the bridge are a major distraction, these are one of the challenges with night photography and difficult to handle. Blended exposures or HDR techniques can be used here. Once again there are WB issues to be corrected.

Ulster for me has too much dead space. There are two shots here to my eye. One in portrait with lamps leading to the Jeanie Johnson. The other is a Pano of the South Bank leading once again to the Jeanie Johnson. Ditto the WB being off again.

Thecageyone

Just to say I downloaded a file to check the properties, but don't worry, i deleted it right after

He was on ISO 400/30 secs/f/22

praveenk16

Thank You very much KKV, Thecageyone and Cabansail. @ Cabansail: I have not used this forum much, so din know how post the picture in the same thread, thanx for telling me and what is Exif? and how to handle my WB issues but thank you all for sharing ur views and support, I feel so good that I have ppl to help me in this new world of photography. thank u all

Heebie

I like them.. including the odd angles they're shot it.. that's something I like to do.

BUT.. overall I think they seem overexposed a little. The lighest parts wash out to white & have little detail, while the darkest shadows are fairly light and have quite a bit of detail, and the images aren't as contrasty as I'd want them to be if they were mine.

SetOverSet

praveenk16 wrote: »

Thank You very much KKV, Thecageyone and Cabansail. @ Cabansail: I have not used this forum much, so din know how post the picture in the same thread, thanx for telling me and what is Exif? and how to handle my WB issues but thank you all for sharing ur views and support, I feel so good that I have ppl to help me in this new world of photography. thank u all

EXIF is just the file format (exchangeable image file format) of the metadata attached to the image, i.e. camera & lens info, metering mode, shutter speed, aperture, iso, focal length, copyright info, though most of the time when people refer to the EXIF data, you'll find the mean the exposure datails.

As for WB, it's very difficult to get right in-camera at night. I usually try to get it as close as possible in camera as different WB's will give different RGB histograms, but your best best is to shoot RAW and use the WB eyedropper tool in post and click on an area in your image that's meant to be neutral grey or even white and then fine tune it from there.

I'd also set your camera to it's base ISO and open the lens up to f/16 or even f/11 for these shots. If your worried about maximum depth of field (getting as much as possible in focus), at 18mm and f/16 your hyperfocal distance is ~1m so if you focus on an object ~1m away, everything from 0.5m (half the hyperfocal distance) to ∞ will be acceptably sharp.

5uspect

You can also enable long exposure noise reduction on many cameras. Since the sensor is capturing light for so long the electronics can heat up a bit resulting in some additional image noise. The long exposure noise reduction essentially records another image with the shutter closed and subtracts the noise pattern.

praveenk16

SetOverSet wrote: »

EXIF is just the file format (exchangeable image file format) of the metadata attached to the image, i.e. camera & lens info, metering mode, shutter speed, aperture, iso, focal length, copyright info, though most of the time when people refer to the EXIF data, you'll find the mean the exposure datails.

As for WB, it's very difficult to get right in-camera at night. I usually try to get it as close as possible in camera as different WB's will give different RGB histograms, but your best best is to shoot RAW and use the WB eyedropper tool in post and click on an area in your image that's meant to be neutral grey or even white and then fine tune it from there.

I'd also set your camera to it's base ISO and open the lens up to f/16 or even f/11 for these shots. If your worried about maximum depth of field (getting as much as possible in focus), at 18mm and f/16 your hyperfocal distance is ~1m so if you focus on an object ~1m away, everything from 0.5m (half the hyperfocal distance) to ∞ will be acceptably sharp.

Thank you very much, the first two points helped me very much but how can we calculate the hyperfocal distance in any instance?

DaireQuinlan

praveenk16 wrote: »

Thank you very much, the first two points helped me very much but how can we calculate the hyperfocal distance in any instance?

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html is your friend. The hyperfocal distance varies according to the focal length (woops, and f/stop of course) and what your definition of 'in focus' is (ie what's your criteria for how big the circle of confusion at the focal plane is). This is dependend on personal preference and will probably vary according to the size of the format you're shooting.

For the simples just put in your focal length and camera model and out'll pop the hyperfocal distance. There was a time when lenses used to include this information on the lens itself, back when they used to be properly made. Ah the olden times, when real men only shot manual focus lenses and those lenses were all made of glass and steel and weighed a ton. None of this plastic lens business, no siree !

praveenk16

5uspect wrote: »

You can also enable long exposure noise reduction on many cameras. Since the sensor is capturing light for so long the electronics can heat up a bit resulting in some additional image noise. The long exposure noise reduction essentially records another image with the shutter closed and subtracts the noise pattern.

thank you very much I did find that option gonna try out how its gonna work.......

praveenk16

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html is your friend. The hyperfocal distance varies according to the focal length (woops, and f/stop of course) and what your definition of 'in focus' is (ie what's your criteria for how big the circle of confusion at the focal plane is). This is dependend on personal preference and will probably vary according to the size of the format you're shooting.

For the simples just put in your focal length and camera model and out'll pop the hyperfocal distance. There was a time when lenses used to include this information on the lens itself, back when they used to be properly made. Ah the olden times, when real men only shot manual focus lenses and those lenses were all made of glass and steel and weighed a ton. None of this plastic lens business, no siree !

wow thats really nice info, but before I get into the field I am goin to read some about these terms, these(circle of confusion) terms dont give me clear picture of what it is. Anyways thank you and everyone for such a good support, I have never used this forum so much but its awesome, ppl so good. thank you all