New G3 user...hi all!

[banpei]

Hello everyone, I've been interested in photoraphy for quite a while, and as I just graduated, I thought I'd throw caution to the wind and spend my graduation present money on a G3, and I must say I'm just blown away. That's also one big run on sentence... oh well. Anyways, since this is a high-end kind of camera for a low-end kind of guy, I've kind of came across a few questions that I thought I'd try throwing past you all...

1: How do you create night-time blurred pictures such as these? http://www.deviantart.com/view/2306043 I know you have to set the shutter speed low, but if you do that, won't the lights from the neon signs and such burn out to show a bright white? Would you counteract that with a high f-speed? like f8?

2: Would a superfine large picture sized down to 1024x768 have the same or better quality as one originally taken at 1024x768?

Well...thanks!

[ryuwulf]

More than likely a star filter was used and the exposue is a couple of seconds. That will produce the blur you are looking for.

For the format and size it all depends on what you are doing and what you want to accomplish.

I always set mine to L and superfine. You can always shrink down an image, but if you have an image that is

800 x 600 and you want to upsize it, you will get some pixelization.

Best to leave it at max.

[elbirth]

Also, something else to try for those kinds of blurred night-time shots, you might wanna just try the basic night mode on the dial... I've tried it a few times, and any bit of movement that happens will give a bit of a blur... I've yet to try it with lights and on a tripod or something though... but it's worth a shot.

And I completely agree with keeping the images at the max so you can scale down. I keep mine on Fine rather than SuperFine though.. mainly because most of my pictures won't be printed or anything. But I keep them at 2272x1704 resolution as well.

[billdcat]

I would actually say that the photo you have linked to has an exposure time of about 1/4 to 1/2 seconds, judging from the fact that the people in the foreground are actually fairly sharp with little motion.

To take a nighttime shot, I would decide first on how long an exposure I wanted, then use time priority mode to set the desired time and have the camera calculate the aperture. I can't say how long an exposure you will need, but the photo above has some fast moving objects, so you probably wouldn't want to go more than 1/2 seconds for something like that. With something like a photo of nighttime traffic, you can experiment with the entire range up to the max 15 seconds that the G3 supports.

Having the lights burn out is not a factor of the length of exposure, it is more a matter of contrast with what is around the light. A photo of a bright light in a night sky will probably cause an overexposure on the light simply because if you want to get any detail in the shadow areas, you have to bring up the overall exposure, increasing burn in the hilight areas. This will be the same regardless of what exposure time you choose. A photo of a neon sign probably won't burn out as badly just because the sign will throw light onto the surface behind it, decreasing overall contrast.

As far as what size to use, I use either raw or superfine at 2272x1704. I have yet to use anything smaller, and don't intend to. You never know when you might have the need for the higher quality, and if you produce printouts on your own, I wouldn't go anything smaller than the 2272x1704 setting. Memory is cheap, but you can never go back and re-take a photo to get the higher quality.