Welwyn Garden in the evening?

[StevenRaith]

I have been out in the cold, possibly toxic air of WGC and have been snapping some stuff.

Clicky for some rather amateurish piccys (http://www.evoposters.net/carsa/album303)

Out of 91 pics, those are the only ones i want to share with you because I have discovered that in this sort of light a tripod, and very careful manual focus are required [the fog/smog seemed to make the AF cry http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/wwwthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif]

Any thoughts, opinions, or general abuse appreciated http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/wwwthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif

Ooh, blimey, my cut and paste included my Evo smileys :)

thought I would drop a couple of the pics inline, the rest are variations with different arpetures, shutters and ISOs:
http://www.evoposters.net/carpics/album303/image030web.jpg
http://www.evoposters.net/carpics/album303/image007web.jpg

[ACDCROCKS]

The first one is great shot, but would of looked 10X nicer with a Double exposure, making the moon bigger than what it is in the pic.

[StevenRaith]

Double exposure? What is this technique you refer to sir?

*passes the 'n3wbie bat' over to ACDC so he can dish out a beating* :)

Seriously, never heard of it, other than as a techique to overlay an image from another shot to improve it.

Do you mean to take a shot of the moon at 55mm [think I took that at 18mm] and then overlay it in Photoshop?

[edit: I actually really wish I had a tripod so I could have used a lower ISO on the top shot - ISO 1600 has left it a bit grainy. from what I am told using ISO 200/400, a tripod and a longer shutter/larger Fstop would help reduce that?]

[Edit again to point out this is all handheld...hence the lack of pictures. the rest were blurred a bit ;)]

[StevenRaith]

Any suggestions on how to do a better job of that?
I did get some other pictures but due to it being a bit nippy, there was excessive shake on them. And I mean excessive. I will get a tripod one day...
[and yes there is a distinct lack of things to shoot around here!]

Exif:
ISO 400
1/125th
F5.6
[full exif should be on that piccy if you save it]

http://www.evoposters.net/carpics/album303/image001resized2.jpg

[Tlee05]

by double exposure ACDC means such as if you had your shutter speed at 0.3 seconds make it 0.6+ seconds, what lets in more light = more exposure = bigger moon!You can take 2 shots at the same postion one to make the moon big and one to get the lights right on the tree/building layer them together and you got a big moon and your lights are prefect on the tree/building this would only take a few seconds to do in PS.
You asked how to do a better job of your image, I cant say because im not sure what you was looking for a dark image with 1 black layer on top of the sky, or the whole image bright so you can see the cars etc, or just how you got it now where you can just see the lights on top of the blackness?..

[StevenRaith]

Ah, that makes sense now.

Must admit, I'm not a huge fan of PS for 'making' pictures - rescuing them, yes, as I often completely knacker the exposure ;) - but I prefer to leave images 'as they are' with little more than the odd touch up to make them a bit more veiwable [USM, exposure comp, light fill etc]. I havent modded any of the above images as it happens - just straight off the camera and resixed/resampled to make them a bit quicker to download.

TBH what I wanted to do was to get at least some of the colour and texure on the bottom half of the image - even if it was as little as just beign able to see the outline of the kerbs/cars etc, but multiple mucking about with the shutter speed/arpeture didnt really make a great deal of difference, thy sky ended up way overexposed.

I didnt, however, try banging it up to ISO1600 - d'you think that would have improved things, or would it have just ended up overexposed again? [I realise these things are very much dependant on teh conditions, but let me put it this way - is it better to use slightly faster shutter/higher Fstop with higher ISO, or would it have been better to have used a tripod, higher fstop and a longer shutter speed in terms of exposure?]

I wont take it as gospel because obviously you don't know how much light there was [it was post twilight however if that helps] but any ideas are appreciated.

FWIW I banged the piccy up on a couple of the car forums I go to and they were fairly well recieved by the snap-happy types on there, so can't argue.

I'm actually liking that picture quite a lot now too :cool: