Sydney cityscape night shots

[dpastern]

Hey guys,

I went into the city last night and tried my hand at nighttime cityscape photography, pretty pleased with the results, especially since it's my first time trying this. All shots at ISO 100, f22, shot on tripod with remote release. Shutter speeds varied from 45 seconds through to around 2 minutes or so. All but one image taken with Canon's 20-35mm f2.8 L series lens, the other image was take with the Canon 35-80mm f4.5-f5.6 Mark III lens.

Sydney Harbour Bridge from the Milsons Point (Luna Park)

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1752.jpg

Another shot, taken near the above location:

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1751_corrected.jpg

Ferris Wheel at Sydney's Luna Park

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1755.jpg

Sydney Harbour Bridge from the North Sydney Olympic Swimming pool

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1758.jpg

The Sydney Opera House from the International terminal - using my 35-80mm, zoomed in. I tried a variety of exposures here, but felt this was the best as it didn't blow out the details in the white tiles of the building. Anything longer than this started to blow details. I could probably try some fancy HDR with these series of images...

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1768.jpg

Same location as the previous shot, but with the 20-35mm f2.8 and a wider shot. Was tricky, cos lots of ferries were coming into dock at Circular Quay, and quite a few food pedestrians were making their way along here as well.

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1766.jpg

City Skyscrapers from the same vantage point as the previous shots:

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1772_corrected.jpg

Sydney Harbour Bridge from the Opera House side:

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/cityscapes/CRW_1779.jpg

I've done a bit of cloning here to remove tonnes of hot pixels from the images, as well as trying to remove some flare/halos (forgot to take the hood with me). All shots have had slight adjustments to contrast (not more than +4 for any one image) and hue/saturation (a few images I pumped it to +9, but most of them were in the range of +2-3 or so). Some creative sharpening using the smart sharpen tool and LAB mode, as well as some USM on resizing for the web. I've also ran default passes of Neat Image on the images, to help clean up minor noise artificats.

C&C appreciated. I hope you enjoy the images! This will probably be my memories of Sydney, I'm almost certainly moving back to live with my parents due to being unemployed and financial constraints. If I move, I have no intentions of returning to Sydney in the future, it's full of bad memories.

Dave

[liquid30]

wow those are really amazing shots!

[dpastern]

Thank you for the kind words, much appreciated! I forgot to add in my original post, there has been some cropping, as well as usage of the measurement tool to straighten the horizon (it look straight when I took the shots!!!). Also, shot #7 had some tinkering in Photoshop with filter > lens correction to avoid the leaning in effect that comes from not shooting with a TSE.

Dave

[Lawrie B]

Very nice Dave
Well done
Love #5 AND #8

[Extirpate]

They're all amazing shots, I love the last one. Good enough to print and frame!

[Suicidenote]

very nice. took a very long time to load, but they may been just me.

[Tee Why]

Looks good, the sky is nice too as it's not brown like some when they leave it in AWB.

[BottomBracket]

These are incredible photos, well taken and processed. I like the last one best, the reflections are amazing. Don't do HDR please! :)

[dpastern]

very nice. took a very long time to load, but they may been just me.

Probably my end. These are on our local webserver on our network at home, and our ISP is let's just say...slow and very unreliable. I really should get into the habit of hosting on my flickr pro account and doing it from there, but having a local webserver is so easy!

Tee Why - these were shot in AWB, as I find with Canon DSLRs it's the most accurate. Canon's WB performance is very poor from my experience - Nikon is far superior in this respect. Those comments aside, a slight increase in contrast helps.

Does anyone have any idea why the images were ever so slightly lacking in contrast? There is also some slight loss of sharpness and smearing if you look really close at the image, I'm not sure why this is the case? I used f22 for maximum DOF and that should help sharpness. Lens was set to infinity, and mirror lockup, tripod and remote release were used. Tripod was a sturdy manfrotto tripod with 029 head and there wasn't a strong wind or anything. True, minor sharpness applied via DPP (+3) and the aforementioned sharpening in LAB mode, and then sharpening on the resized image does help, but I still feel that the shots should have been much sharper when viewed at 100%. Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks for the kind words everyone else!

Dave

[PG07]

I remember as a youngster in the 70's going to Sydney and taking a photo like no.4 with a point and shoot and flash and wondered why it didn't come out:(
Top quality shots to be proud of.
btw No.4 is my favourite;)

[khall]

Nice set of pictures. To me they show that part of the city "As it is"
No matter what the time of day is, the Opera House is allways hard to get the exposure correct.

[dpastern]

Thanks for the very kind words guys :) In all the years that I've lived in Sydney (38), I've only taken a handful of images of the harbour bridge and opera house, probably can count them on both of my hands.

Dave

[::John::]

Dave - you are right - the Opera House is a pig to expose fully without blowing highlights through the middle - you have managed to get the tiles nicely while still keeping the 'ends' clearly visible.

Sorry to hear about the reason for the move - heading north?

The memories you have taken and displayed for us are timeless - I hope you still enjoy them for what they are for a long time - it can be such a beautiful city.

[funkybuddha]

haha i have a similar shot of pic #2 except in daylight and with my 4MP point and shoot :) I miss Sydney

[LMP]

Really nice Dave, I'd love to go to Sydney someday :(

[dpastern]

Dave - you are right - the Opera House is a pig to expose fully without blowing highlights through the middle - you have managed to get the tiles nicely while still keeping the 'ends' clearly visible.

Sorry to hear about the reason for the move - heading north?

The memories you have taken and displayed for us are timeless - I hope you still enjoy them for what they are for a long time - it can be such a beautiful city.

Thanks John - yes, I'm heading north. My parents live in Ipswich, QLD. Since I've quit my job, I can no longer financially afford to stay in Sydney. I refuse to share accommodation with people that I do not know, and my current residence is too expensive ($150/week). On unemployment payments, I'm lucky to get a maximum of around $430 or so. After rent, that leaves me $130 per fortnight to pay for food, pay my mastercard monthly bill, pay for transportation costs etc, it's not do-able. Further to that, because I quit the job, Centrelink will almost certainly punish me by removing 18% of my payment for six months (courtesy of the evil Howard, the man is plain evil). The job was damaging to my health, I was underpaid by at least 20k p.a, and I was doing 2 jobs. My Dr. isn't interested in helping me out, the 2 people who are now doing my job and severely struggling won't help me out with written statements, so it's going to be impossible to prove my story to Centrelink. It's nice to know that people will **** you over because they want to save their own skin. Typical human nature and it's just one of the reasons why the human species, as a whole, sickens me to the core.

Dave

[tomr7]

The last shot and the first opera house shot are clearly the best for mine anyway, nice.

[dpastern]

Thanks Tom :)

Dave

[whereismykit]

Nice and sharp photos. Great job

[Desertraptor]

I like that you made the effort to travel for the reverserse angle.
Great series of shots with some angles I've not seen done before.

[dpastern]

Thanks for the kind words guys :) I missed one angle that I really wanted to do, and since this is my last day in Sydney, I'm not going to get the chance to shoot it. Will have to practice on Brissie now ;)

Dave

[::John::]

Safe travelling, Dave.

[BenJammin]

Really nice shots man.

[MSJGD]

Absolutely beautiful makes me want to go back. Thanks.

[dpastern]

Thanks John for the safe wishes, much appreciated.

Thanks everyone else for your kind words, very much appreciated. The Sydney cityscape is one of the most beautiful in the world, I'm going to miss it.

Dave

[FotOz]

You certainly captured the spirit there, Dave. Well done (from a bushy!)

[fiftysvn]

Great pictures!

[bobinatcat]

love the first one of the Opera House. I has a very nice feel to it.

[bestfromnw]

nicely done.

[AeroSmith]

Awesome series....love the first opera house shot!