Need some help, Night Photography

[KarinaB1970]

While I have been successful with some of my night shots, I have run into a couple of problems that I am not sure how to correct. I will do my best to summarize...

Last night I tried to photograph a RR bridge that crosses over the river by the mouth of the sound. The sun had set and was casting a low, orange sky beneath darker blueish skies which were behind the bridge. There are a few lights on the bridge, but not too many and not over powering. Though it was getting pretty dark, when I set my camera to shutter speed mode (letting it choose my aperture) it would not allow me to go longer than appx. 8 seconds because my lens was at it's limit with the largest F-stop. At night I always bracket like crazy since I am new to all of this (first camera in September). ALL of my pictures came out pretty dark. Then again, it was dark outside. I was hoping to be able to leave the shutter open longer but was not able. End of story, I was able to play with the levels a bit and at least get something from the shoot, but I am not happy with the colors and how they appear at 100%. I used 400 speed film so there is some noise, which is fine. But the colors are kind of pixelated/separated and I dont like that :( What can I do differently, if anything to prevent this from happening? Why does my camera sometimes only allow me to go 8 seconds when it is dark? Is it reading the brightest spot in the composition and adjusting the metering based on that one spot? I am using a 10D and have it set to evaluative metering. I could not find a way to spot meter with this camera? Here is a picture I took last night and a link to the larger version. Most were pretty sharp, just very dark. I can share the original with you if you need to see that, just let me know.

10 Sec Exposure, F16, ISO 400

http://Galleries.smugmug.com/photos/12156531-M.jpg

and the large file:

http://galleries.smugmug.com/gallery/305825/1/12156531/Large

I know the smaller images don't look that bad. But what if I wanted to print it?

You can see some of my other night shots here:

http://galleries.smugmug.com/gallery/305825

I do have one more question, but I will start a new thread for that one.

I appreciate any help, especially about the metering issue (I think that that is what it is anyways).

[JoeTampa]

Manual mode is your friend.


You are running into a brick wall imposed by the camera attempting to reciprocate the setting you've chosen (shutter speed) with the aperture as it sees fit. Evaluative metering is what you want, but as you've discovered, you're running into other exposure issues.

Try setting the camera on Manual (M on the mode dial). Set a larger aperture (say, f/5.6 or so), set the ISO to 100, and try the exposure again. Opening the aperture will allow you faster shutter times (start at 1/30 or 1/10 or so), and the lower ISO will prevent those settings from resulting in massive overexposure. The only concern I'd have here might be depth-of-field with the foreground railing - set too low an aperture and the railing will be out of focus nearer to you. This may (or may not) be what you want; and you may have to fiddle the exposure time longer and the aperture smaller (higher number) to compensate. However, I would always try to make it work as ISO 100 when possible due to the lower noise figures.


For further study, examine the relationships between ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. You can get the same exposure with many different but reciprocal settings of those 3 elements, but they will affect other creative elements (blur/sharpness due to shutter speed & DoF due to aperture).


Hope this helps!


- Joe