Night Time Long Exposure Shots

[Fr0dders]

Whats the secret to these ?

This is what I took,


IMG_2046.jpg by Fr0dders, on Flickr

and this is what I'm comparing it to.

I set the camera to ISO100, the smallest apperture I had, and even with 2 / 3 second exposures was having some parts horrendously over exposed. The building slap bang in the middle is apparently so horrendously over exposed that even lightroom can't bring it back. I've tried applying a filter over it to drop the exposure back but it just ends up looking awful as most of the detail has gone.

How do you get 25 second exposures like Shoosh's without having the bright lights just over expose everything ?

Couple of favourites from a trip about Westminster the other night...

untitled-26-3.jpg by sho0sh, on Flickr


untitled-25-2.jpg by sho0sh, on Flickr


untitled-21-3.jpg by sho0sh, on Flickr

 

[Fr0dders]

There's not much you can do other than HDR/manual HDR, or selective darkening.

His shots are simply that there's no buildings with brighter lights. The first one is easier because the buildings are further away but even the billboards towards the centre are over exposed.

I'm having problems with 2 second exposures though.

I experimented with 5 / 6 second exposures and everything was overexposed, it was all just white.

I take it the only way to take 30 second exposures at night is with a filter or some sort to make it even darker then ?

 

[Fr0dders]

I did have an ND with me on those, but those are actually just done with my CPL still attached. I think they were about 30 secs, and probably used f6 and ISO 100. In post I underexposed them by about 0.5 of a stop and toned down the highlights a bit, the originals were a bit more blown out indeed!

CPL ?

 

[Fr0dders]

I think comparing your image to those London ones is also a little different because of a number of factors.

First one is that yours aren't really taken at night, they are just after sunset. I personally don't feel the sky on that evening is doing much for the photo.

While London has lots of lights, in the photos you are comparing to, most are very distant specks of light. Your photo though, the light sources are bigger and the buildings are much closer, further to that they are light in colour and thus are absorbing all that light and blowing the highlights on them. If you look at the first picture of London you referenced, you can see St Pauls is also like that, its just very distant.

The third factor is that the photos of London are taken actually at night. The long-ish exposure though just shows up how much light pollution there is in the sky.

I myself took a set of photos of London at night last year and I used between F/11 and F/22 and some pretty long exposures in bulb mode.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/taiga_studio/sets/72157634574151755/

It's real trial and error as I only came away with a handful of shots that were exactly what I wanted. If you are shooting long exposures they take a while, especially when trying different lengths of time. It ends up being an entire night of shooting. Shooting RAW also gives you some scope to recover highlights. On another note, I have tried playing around with a ND400 (9 stops) which is so dark you can barely see through it during the day and around sunset. I found it a bit useless by the river though, as things like boats and such on the water end up having too much movement from the water.

Thanks for that

Given the limitations of the scene (every building was white painted rendering like you say so they just soaked up the light)

What else would you have done differently being charged with photographing the same scene

1) taken it later in the evening with less light
2) used a filter ?

 

[Fr0dders]

Confused now. My photo was taken just after sunset. Think it was about 9:30 :10:00pm ish

 

[Fr0dders]

Tried to.