Help needed taking good pictures at night

DannyW · 15 Feb 2008 at 20:59

Hi guys, I've got a Nikon D40 with 18-55 lens. I'm off to a car meet tomorrow evening and have promised to get some good shots as i'm the only one with a decent camera. I have a tripod so long exposures isn't problem. Now.. i've just been out to a car park with orange floodlights to get some practice and i'm struggling to get decent shots, i've tryed ISO 200 to 800. 1.6 secs to 3 secs exp, but my pics are still dark and dull.

Can anyone recommend me some settings please?? I'm too tired to go back out and practice more (although i know this is what I should be doing

)

L0rdMike · 15 Feb 2008 at 21:12

I would say always keep iso down to lowest it will go. I aint tried it in ages but the last time I had a go I used 30 sec exp and not have street lamps in the shot

insane200 · 15 Feb 2008 at 21:45

the problem there is the crappy sodium lights

im not sure on nikons but canons had a setting for sodium lights like that.

robertgilbert86 · 15 Feb 2008 at 21:49

Shoot RAW, fake the white balance.

ElDude · 15 Feb 2008 at 22:14

robertgilbert86 said:
Shoot RAW, fake the white balance.

You can "rescue" a shot to a certain degree with jpegs too. I've just done it with a photo of my tabby cat. That had yellow/orange light from something (not sure if it was street lights through the window, or strange light through curtains), but a little tinkering and I got the balance right.

It is much simpler with RAW though

rpstewart · 15 Feb 2008 at 22:17

DannyW said:
Hi guys, I've got a Nikon D40 with 18-55 lens. I'm off to a car meet tomorrow evening and have promised to get some good shots as i'm the only one with a decent camera. I have a tripod so long exposures isn't problem. Now.. i've just been out to a car park with orange floodlights to get some practice and i'm struggling to get decent shots, i've tryed ISO 200 to 800. 1.6 secs to 3 secs exp, but my pics are still dark and dull.

Can anyone recommend me some settings please?? I'm too tired to go back out and practice more (although i know this is what I should be doing )

The big problem I see with that shot is that you're shooting into the floodlight so you have the problem of blown highlights and most of the subject is in shadow. If you want to have the floodlight in the shot then you're going to need to use fill flash which is going to take a fair bit of practice to get right.

Oh, and lose the wheelie bin

DannyW · 15 Feb 2008 at 22:28

would i need PS to mess about with white balance?

insane200 · 15 Feb 2008 at 22:33

you shoud be able to play with it on your camera

you'll get choices like warm,cold and manual

.

At The Gates · 15 Feb 2008 at 23:07

Like has been said. Shoot RAW and fix the white balance and any exposure issues afterwards. Really, there's no excuse to shoot in JPG! That's just my choice though. To be honest the kit lens isn't really fast enough to get non blurred shots in low light without a decent exposure time/tripod. You can go to ISO800 ok with the kit lens. I would stick the camera on auto ISO and set the max value in the camera to 800. Peronsally i think 1000+ on the D40 is completely unusable.

That photo isn't too bad (technically speaking!) apart from the white balance. There's really not a lot you can do about the blown highlights with the exposure times you'll need on the kit lens, without using a flash. And really i would avoid using the onboard flash. You can always have a play with it though.

GSXRMovistar · 16 Feb 2008 at 00:37

Hope you don't mind but I had a quick play, couldn't do much about the flood light, really over exposes the shot.

EDIT: looking at it again I've now given it a dodgy green tint.

benneh · 16 Feb 2008 at 17:31

ISO 2-400, F-stop according to artistic intention. Expose for the scene, and as rpstewart said try not to shoot directly into lights unless you're using (off camera ideally) fill flash. And of course shoot in .raw so that you can correct the white balance later.