Night Time Help

Fr0dders · 18 Feb 2008 at 23:08

right, heres a photo i took on my weekend away in london

http://mrlol.myftp.org/photo/index1.php?currname=P1000788.JPG&currdir=London&showpage=1

Firstly, what am i doing wrong. This was on a tripod and set at ISO 200 and i did a bunch of varying exposures. The one ive linked to above is probably the best of the lot

http://mrlol.myftp.org/photo/index1.php?currdir=London

Short of setting apperture to maximum, ISO to 200 (about the most it will go without getting seriously noisy) and playing with the exposure times, im not sure what else there is to do. Have i reached the limits of a bridge camera here ?

2ndly, can anything be done to improve it in photoshop ?

Helium_Junkie · 18 Feb 2008 at 23:35

When there's that much contrast (bright clock to pitch balck water/sky) you have very limited options. You can try HDR... good luck though

tough image!

Fr0dders · 18 Feb 2008 at 23:59

I (like everybody else on here i suspect) needs an EOS 1d Mk III

this is what my photo should have looked like

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/details.php?id=1482

collisster · 19 Feb 2008 at 00:25

I'm sure the london eye moves more than that in 1 minute

WotDa · 19 Feb 2008 at 00:32

collisster said:
I'm sure the London eye moves more than that in 1 minute

Is it open for business the photo was taken? (Exif suggests 09:56, which could be 21:56?)

Interestingly though, I actually had this as my wallpaper a few weeks back.

SilverPenguin · 19 Feb 2008 at 00:47

Always shoot raw for night time shots like this because its fairly easy to get back detail as long as you don't over expose. I shot this last week:

Clock was blown as expected:

But using the raw file I opened it in photoshop, darkened it down to get some detail back in the face, saved it, opened the raw again but with the correct settings then simply opened the darker version over the top, created a layer mask and painted the detailed clock back in. Took all of 1 minute to do this very quick dirty version to give as an example.

Detailed face:

%100:

Just make sure you expose with caution, you don't to be too dark with the exposure but just make sure the highlights are not 'too' bright. Use the histogram.

Hope thats of some use...

EDIT: Colours may look a little off as I just realised I had photoshop set to adobe RGB for some image library stuff I had been working on and I forgot to set back to sRGB so the colours changed a litte when I saved for web.

EDIT: Also forgot to say, you should just shoot two exposures one exposing for the scene and one for the clock, then just overlay them and do the quick mask once back home. Thats probably the best way of getting maximum highlight detail.

Fr0dders · 19 Feb 2008 at 09:58

WotDa said:
Interestingly though, I actually had this as my wallpaper a few weeks back.

it still is mine, Had a romantic london break weekend before valentines day and took the Champagne flight on the london eye. Was a lovely weekend, so this photo has nice memories for me, even if it isnt my photo

Silverpenguin, thanks for the tips, but mine seems grainy to start with