Night Street Photography (Christmas lights)

Planning on taking photos of Christmas lights when they all go up and plan to try get some decent photos out of them hopefully.

Is a Nikon DX 35mm 1.8 decent enough to take great night photography with? The only other lens i have is the stock one currently.

Any any tips & tricks people might of gained over the years?

Also to note my camera is a Nikon d5300

It'll certainly be better than the kit zoom lens. I'd suggest using a tripod otherwise you're likely to be upping the ISO, which won't look great on a crop sensor.

Tripod, ISO 100, longer shutter speed. Make sure you meter correctly. You should get decent results.

Would have thought the Nikon could cope with 400 ISO at least? Or is it really that bad?

You'd probably be fine up to ISO 800, but I'd still keep noise to a minimum and use a tripod with low shutter speed given the option.

Spleen Sauce said:

You'd probably be fine up to ISO 800, but I'd still keep noise to a minimum and use a tripod with low shutter speed given the option.

Click to expand...

Obviously tripod is ideal but with a decent body with can get away with 800 or 1600 ISO, its possible to get handheld decent shots esp with a f1.8 lens.

Thats great thanks for the tips, I will hopefully do some test shots soon and see if i really need a tripod or not, hoping i can just get away with it be a pain to drag a tripod around.

This was taken last year on a Nikon crop camera at ISO3600..handheld.

_DSC1669 by Skalaberg, on Flickr

I honestly don't understand where all this don't go above ISO 800 on a crop sensor comes from?

Skalaberg said:

I honestly don't understand where all this don't go above ISO 800 on a crop sensor comes from?

Click to expand...

Probably an legacy issue from old cameras. My D60 was absolutely terrible above ISO800, even 400 wasn't great which is why I went straight the D700.

New cameras have much better sensors and abilities but opinions can be based on what we know, even if what we know is from years ago.

Spleen Sauce said:

You'd probably be fine up to ISO 800, but I'd still keep noise to a minimum and use a tripod with low shutter speed given the option.

Click to expand...

ISO 800 as a limit on a modern DSLR even a crop is silly the D5300 has a great sensor and will get perfectly useable results well beyond that I'd suspect 3200 and 6400 would be great for most common uses.

Awesome good to know i can just handheld it Cheers all.

With the D5300 you can happily shoot at ISO 3200, a FF camera will give you ISO 6400.
In an emergency you can go higher but you probably want to start looking at fatser lenses or flashes.

Of course, if you can use a tripod you should, not just to lower ISo but to increase sharpness

So here is a example shot from my first try at night photography/lights.



This was shot with my 35mm Nikon Lens @ ISO 2500 1/500sec @ f/1.8 handheld. Defiantly could have taken better i believe will be going back down again i think and having another go.

Thanks all for the tips and advise, You gave me some settings to go by at least to get me started

do you really need 1/500s shutter speed with a 35mm lens? I would ahve though 1/50 s would be enough.

You could then either reduce the ISO setting and/or increase aperture and have more depth of field????

Greebo said:

do you really need 1/500s shutter speed with a 35mm lens? I would ahve though 1/50 s would be enough.

You could then either reduce the ISO setting and/or increase aperture and have more depth of field????

Click to expand...

I initially increased the shutter speed because I was only capturing half of the lights and all I can think of at the time was the shutter speed was to fast so bumped this to make sure i captured all the light from them.

So some of the original photos had the right side lights on but left was like they wasn't even on.

I managed to get some shots from Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park at the weekend. I'm fairy new to this Photography Lark ( 3-4 Weeks) and my post processing leaves a lot to be desired but what are some thoughts?
20151129-IMG_4459 by tyrone wilson, on Flickr
20151129-IMG_4458 by tyrone wilson, on Flickr

Nice shots Tyrone1Wils

I am going back to the lights tonight to try settings said above and get some more shots as its for a website that we manage anyway so business calls for me to get better

....