What white balance at night?

[Carlosthetackle]

What WB setting should you use to get the best results outdoors at night? The only sources of light are streetlights (yellow/white), car lights and neon signs.

[sdommin]

I usually use Auto WB in a situation where you have many different types of light, and it usually works well. Try it, and if you don't like the results, try the tungsten setting.

[satnitefever]

I sometimes use the custom WB, sometimes it works quite well

[g man]

What about night shots of the stars/ moon? I put it in Tv mode and experiment w/ diff setting but can never seem to get it quite right. Im going for the look you see in some pics where it looks as if the sun has gone under the horizon and the moon and stars are just becomeing or are fully visible (i.e. dark ground/ trees then redish lower 1/2 of sky then blue then dark blue/ black sky at top). Or incase of just night sky shots, what is a good over all setting to begin with? Sorry if long winded just can never seem to get the color of sky and moon in sharp focus at same time.

[jyrgen]

I'd say this is one of the situations where there is no good excuse for not using RAW, provided you have access to decent RAW conversion software. Playing with WB in post-processing can bring interesting results. I have some examples here (http://jyrgen.fotopic.net/show_collection.php?id=50003) where streetlights plus fog result in quasi aurora borealis ;)

[sdommin]

g man wrote:
What about night shots of the stars/ moon? I put it in Tv mode and experiment w/ diff setting but can never seem to get it quite right. Im going for the look you see in some pics where it looks as if the sun has gone under the horizon and the moon and stars are just becomeing or are fully visible (i.e. dark ground/ trees then redish lower 1/2 of sky then blue then dark blue/ black sky at top). Or incase of just night sky shots, what is a good over all setting to begin with? Sorry if long winded just can never seem to get the color of sky and moon in sharp focus at same time.

For the moon and stars, I would suggest the "daylight" WB setting. The moon, after all, is just reflected sunlight, and the stars are... well, they're stars.

It seems like you're asking more of an exposure question than a WB question, though. For exposures just after sunset, start at f4 and maybe 1/4 sec. (at ISO50 on a tripod, of course). Adjust your shutter speed as necessary. For sharp focus, put your camera in manual focus at infinity.

[drisley]

For nite shots I definatley always use RAW mode, then I can pick my fav WB later in Breezebrowser before I convert to Tiff