Tips for urban nightshots

[spiralysis]

Hi, this friday night im driving up to London to take some shots for my photography course at college. Can anyone give me some good advise about nighttime photography, or links ot websites or anything?

Thanks alot.

Edit: Oh i have a 20d with a kit lens =(

[peatoire]

http://www.livingroom.org.au/photolog/tips/night_and_low_light_digital_photography_tips.php

That should keep you going for a bit. The site's a bit 'busy' but it has some great night photography links.
HTH

[spiralysis]

Thanks, any more information anyone?

Im really keen to know what colour temp settings and also iso settings i shouold be using also.

[Lightstream]

I've done evening shots in the city with a horrible tripod and a kit lens, and I'm glad to say the results came out well. The only loser of that evening was that the head of the tripod fell off, so I decided to buy a better one. :p

Worry less about gear, shoot more. The 18-55 will do what you ask of it. (of course things like the 10-22 and 17-85 are fun, too.. but don't let that slow you down). It's a philosophy I myself am trying to stick to, and I can do it...sometimes ;)

The tripod is absolutely crucial if you want to pull it off. Park the camera on the tripod, gently release the shutter and take your hands off the camera.

I generally shoot ISO 100 for night shots on a tripod to get as low noise as possible. The reason why we bump up sensitivity is to combat shake when the camera is handheld. Program AE (P mode) works just fine unless you deliberately want to use Av and stop the lens down to get 'star points' in the highlights. Play with both modes and experiment.

Auto WB is fine for most of my shots. If you want to try custom white balance, there is an outstanding CWB thread by Dwight McCann on this forum, do a search for it. He explains it so much better than I could hope to.

The 20D has substantially more mirror slap than the 350D I used to use. This induces vibrations, even on a tripod, that may cost you some sharpness. Read up on your manual how to turn on a feature called mirror lockup (MLU), it's in Custom Functions. Then set the camera to self-timer mode and click the shutter button. When MLU is enabled, the timer will reduce its countdown to 3 seconds instead of the usual 10, count down and take the shot for you.

http://pix.lightrefineries.org/albums/AU2005/aas.jpg

4 seconds, ISO 100, tripod, Program AE.

[ChP]

I do street photography from time to time. I use TMAX 3200 and push it to 6400 so I have more choices of aperture and shutter speed.

Street photography is really a dialogue between you and the subjects. There usually needs to be some previsualized goal for it to work well.

As for lowlight photography in general...
I recommend using TMAX 3200 and pushing it to 6400 or 12000+ ISO is you are going to be in cramped spaces and don't want the inconvenience of a tripod.

Otherwise consider using a tripod or open flash. With flash you can use shutterspeeds as slow at 1/20 or 1/10 of second and still freeze action. If you can TTL the flash and dial it up +2/3. With manual flash aperture is calculated by dividing the guide number into the flash to subject distance and then multiplying by some factor depending on the ISO (1 for ISO 100).