Night City Photos.

BoomAM

BoomAM

BoomAM

Soldato
Joined
5 Jul 2003
Posts
16,206
Location
Atlanta, USA
Hi.
Im currently in my room, in Akasaka, Toyko, Japan, looking at a breathtaking view of downtown Tokyo.
Problem is that i cant get a decent picture of it. :(

Ive tryed with both my K800 & a Canon S80 that i have with me.

Any tips?

Thanks in advance all. :)
 
You'll need a) a long exposure and b) someway of steadying the camera during the exposure.

a) could be anything up to 5 seconds, keep the ISO down to reduce noise.

b) either a tripod, a handy ledge or something of that ilk. Use the self timer to release the shutter rather than pressing the button.
 
The picture itself is clear, its just not picking up the detail, like all the many lights from the skyline itself.
 
:eek: im hoping to go tokyo in feb to visit my cousin, whats it like out there? is there plenty of pics to be had?

You probably wont have much luck getting a decent shot with the k800i, whats the spec of the s80?
 
brocksta said:
:eek: im hoping to go tokyo in feb to visit my cousin, whats it like out there? is there plenty of pics to be had?

You probably wont have much luck getting a decent shot with the k800i, whats the spec of the s80?
Click to expand...
Ive only been here a day upto now, plenty of wacky things to photograph.
The flight was a pain in the rear though.

The only spec on the S80 that i know of is that its a 8MP camera with optical & digital zooms on it.
 
you should be getting some great results from the s80, unless it's seriously faulty? have you tried manually focusing? maybe it is'nt auto-focusing correctly in the low light?
 
Manual Focus to infinity, ahigh a DOF to get as much focused as possible, low ISO to lower noise. You end up with something like 20s exposure.

This has th effect that even if people walk around in the photo they tend to dispaear and turn ninto ghosts and aren't really noticible.
 
Ive been playing around and have managed to get the pictures looking a lot better. Dont know what settings i changed though! Its the setting that allows me to cycle through a load of 'fractions'. If that makes sence, thats with the camera set to manual. Using that function i can change the picture from really dark to really light. So i can adjust it as nessessary.

The only problem is that every picture i take lacks the natural light. For example, its been a pretty bright day today, but every photo looks like its on the verge of raining (ie; dull).

Why cant the camera just 'take what it sees'. My K800 can do that, so why cant this supposidly better Canon camera do the same?

Ideas?
 
Last edited:
Sounds like you've been adjusting the shutter speed in either fully manual or shutter priority mode. There are plenty of folk here wiiling to help but it's difficult with just a written description:
hoodmeister said:
You need to post an example really dude :)
Click to expand...
 
The pictures are 4Mb+. Theres no image hosts that i know of that'll host an image that size for me.

I can live with manually adjusting the shutter speed to get the right 'brightness', but how do i get it to take pictures that look 'natural', with the natural light showing? If that makes sence?.
 
Last edited:
The most important thing for taking night photos is s tripod. Without it your picture will not be clear. Also use timer shutter release. Put the camera on fully automatic night mode, make sure that it focuses properly - point at some bright spot and lock that focus.

But as has been said earlier we need to see your pictures to tell you what is wrong with them.
Here you can have a look at my nightshots and you can compare to yours
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17633417
 
Ive got the night shots sorted. Its just the day shots now, they all appear very dull.
Ive had a play around with the photoeditor built into VistaRC1, and while i can make them look just as colourful as they should be, they still look 'dull'.
Is this going to be something that i can fix digitally?
 
BoomAM said:
Is this going to be something that i can fix digitally?
Click to expand...

Yes, probably, but without seeing what they look like it's going to be difficult. The Vista photo editor should allow you to resize the image down to smaller dimensions (1024x768 pixels or so) which will be about 250Kb or so and hence easy to host somewhere.
 
If someone wants to add my msn (in trust), i can chuck a few pictures over that, makes it easyier to talk? If anyones willing?
 
d/l yourself "the GIMP" a very good free photo editing software then search for gimp and photoshop tutorials about levels and curves, with levels and curve edits you can do a lot to your photos in the GIMP and photoshop. a few tutorials to look for are s-curves and cross-processing which is fun :) and learn about the on camera histogram, if it has one very basically you want to keep the left and right edges of it flat. if the histogram breaches the left side you've lost shadow detail - under exposed, if it goes over the right edge you've lost highlight detail and it's over-exposed, though it's not a rigid rule just a guide and easily adjusted with a levels edit.
 
Thanks for the tip dunker, but the detail in the pictures are fine. Its just the 'light'. As in they all look like its on the verge of raining, when its actually a sunny day.
 
if they're too dull then it sounds like they're under exposed which is easily fixed by either leaving the camera shutter open longer or just editing the brightness-contrast or levels in a photo editor. if it's the right brightness but it just looks dull anyway you could try shooting in Vivid mode i'd guess the S80 has that, that'll increase colour saturation but i reckon you're better off turning off all on-camera effects to get the best from the sensor and just use photo editing software to edit the pics until you like them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom