Night Street Photography (Christmas lights)

Etheco · 2 Nov 2015 at 13:49

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

Etheco · 3 Nov 2015 at 11:14

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.

Etheco · 6 Nov 2015 at 16:26

Awesome good to know i can just handheld it

Cheers all.

Etheco · 30 Nov 2015 at 15:00

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

Etheco · 30 Nov 2015 at 15:15

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????

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.

Etheco · 1 Dec 2015 at 13:25

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