How to shoot this? Christmas Light Midway...

[Invertalon]

Hello!

I will be up at Cedar Point again this weekend for the last weekend of Twilight, it is a lighted midway that they decorated in hundreds of thousands of LED's. On tree's, buildings, etc... They also have specialty lighting, snow effects, lasers and mood lighting type stuff.

I want to capture this as best as I can to what you would see in person. How can I manage this?

I have a tripod to use... I just need an idea on exposure. I am guessing use ISO 100, but how about aperture and shutter speeds? Should I keep it open for a few seconds or will that result in very washed out photos?

Never shot anything like this *seriously shot, at least* and just need some guidance. Here is a photo I took hand-held previously for an idea of lighting/scenery. I like these photos, but I want better results. Tripod will improve a lot, but is there anything else I can do?

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/invertalon/1-2.jpg

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh280/invertalon/2-3.jpg

[FlyingPhotog]

Shoot before it's totally dark out...

Get it while there's still a little ambient light in the sky.

[Tee Why]

First of all those two shots look pretty good. I too would recommend shooting during twilight so the sky is still illuminated with some light.

I'd recommend ISO 100 on a tripod and stopped down to about f8-16 to maximize the dof. the shutter speed will vary on the light available but I suspect it'll be several seconds long. Check your histogram so the shot is exposed properly and experiment.

Good luck and have fun.

[3Honu]

If you can really stretch out the shutter time you can get people to magically disappear too :)

[lgodwineee]

My best low light shots (Night scene and such) are usually shot at F9 or 11 at 5 sec shutter or more depending on the amount of light... if you want to freeze all movement then you will need at least 1/60, i don't know how good of a result that will be