first night time shoot ever ... be gentle

Well I finally went out and shot my first nighttime shoot. Pretty much the first time I have done anything like this with my new DSLR...

sooooo let me know how I did for the first time ever ...

Canon Rebel XS with 18-55 kit lens...

1)

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Of all the shots, I think #5 is best. I think it might work well with a rectangular crop that cuts off the bottom of the photo and emphasizes the sign (maybe re-frame this one to provide some extra space on top of the building). I also think #1 is an interesting perspective.... if you can move your shooting position such that you can:
- see the entire building
- still catch some of the sky (nice color catch here btw)
- avoid getting that distracting foreground in
you'll have a better photograph.

When you took these photos, did you stop and try to figure out what you wanted to portray, before pressing the shutter? I often find that it helps when I stop and think before I shoot.

Anytime you've a long exposure you'll want a tripod (or somewhere you can set your camera down). Check your white balance. It's off in all photos except for the last one... if you shot RAW it's a snap to fix in post.

Most of the shots are overexposed - check out the area underneath the awning of the main building, for instance, or the bottom of the "Southlake department of public safety" sign.

#1 The composition could be better. Id prefer the subject(the building) fill more of the frame. Also I'd rather see the building at a different angle. You have a green bar in the bottom left of the image. I was basically told you need to look at each element in your composition and ask yourself does it contribute to the story the photo is telling? If not then its distracting.

#2 Lots of overexposure on key elemnts of the subject, the 2nd floor windows. I also feel like the white balance could be cooled down a bit. Its pretty yellow. It also might need to be rotated a tiny bit. I feel like its slanted.

#3 is lacking an obvious subject. The brush in the foreground is distracting if the intent was a skyline type of view.

#4 The statues are underexposed, but if you exposed them correctly then you'd overexpose the building. Id maybe use flash to bring up the exposure on the statues. Theres some distracting foreground elements.

#5 Exposure is off. Id expose so you could read the text on the building. Watch for the cropped flags on the right.

#6 The white balance seems better here. Id maybe warm this one a tiny bit. You have an obvious subject here, but its boring.

Overall I think you should think about composition. Look all around the frame and ask yourself why you're including whats in the frame. Also ask yourself what your subject is, and if its actually interesting.

Night shots are challenging. Good effort.

HeaTransfer wrote in post #10718916
Of all the shots, I think #5 is best. I think it might work well with a rectangular crop that cuts off the bottom of the photo and emphasizes the sign (maybe re-frame this one to provide some extra space on top of the building). I also think #1 is an interesting perspective.... if you can move your shooting position such that you can:
- see the entire building
- still catch some of the sky (nice color catch here btw)
- avoid getting that distracting foreground in
you'll have a better photograph.

When you took these photos, did you stop and try to figure out what you wanted to portray, before pressing the shutter? I often find that it helps when I stop and think before I shoot.

Anytime you've a long exposure you'll want a tripod (or somewhere you can set your camera down). Check your white balance. It's off in all photos except for the last one... if you shot RAW it's a snap to fix in post.

Most of the shots are overexposed - check out the area underneath the awning of the main building, for instance, or the bottom of the "Southlake department of public safety" sign.

Thanks for the input ... I was shooting from a parking garage from a ways away so that is about the only angle I could get while shooting number 1
The lack of zoom I had made it to where I could not cut out most of the foreground stuff. So I just tried to make it look as nice and intentional as possible.

Ok I will take a look at the white balance on them and see what I can do.

buurin wrote in post #10721117
#1 The composition could be better. Id prefer the subject(the building) fill more of the frame. Also I'd rather see the building at a different angle. You have a green bar in the bottom left of the image. I was basically told you need to look at each element in your composition and ask yourself does it contribute to the story the photo is telling? If not then its distracting.

Ya the green bar is actually the cement barrier of the parking garage I was shooting on. I will edit that out. I only had an 18-55mm and a 50mm lens so that was fully zoomed in with my 18-55.

ok I will look into that. The building had very bright lights though haha

Eh, I was just taking a picture of the parking garage I was shooting from so you could get a feel of how far it was away.

Yep I had a real problem with the lighting on the statues compared to the building.

I tried to get it exposed to where you could read the text. Just could not get it. They have running lights right under the text so it was extremely bright from the lights being so close.

Thanks I will keep all that in mind for the next shoot. Ya 6 is boring but just liked the lighting effects on the address so I took a few shots to see what I could do with it.

Regarding exposure: If you're not already familiar with it, be sure to check out the "Av" scale on your camera (not to be confused with the "Av" mode on the dial.)

Adjusting Av is a way of telling the camera to take a shorter or longer exposure without going to full manual settings. This is helpful when there's a lot of bright or dark areas in the picture and your camera is getting confused about how light or dark to make the overall photo.

If my explanation is at all unclear, just take a photo in normal lighting without adjusting the AV slider. Then knock it a few notches to the left of center and snap a shot in the same lighting conditions. Then a few to the right, and compare the results.

Top marks for shooting at night. Unfortunately whilst competently done, the subject matter just isn't very compellling and the yellow cast slightly detracts from the viewing experience.

dmnelson wrote in post #10721953
Regarding exposure: If you're not already familiar with it, be sure to check out the "Av" scale on your camera (not to be confused with the "Av" mode on the dial.)

Adjusting Av is a way of telling the camera to take a shorter or longer exposure without going to full manual settings. This is helpful when there's a lot of bright or dark areas in the picture and your camera is getting confused about how light or dark to make the overall photo.

If my explanation is at all unclear, just take a photo in normal lighting without adjusting the AV slider. Then knock it a few notches to the left of center and snap a shot in the same lighting conditions. Then a few to the right, and compare the results.

What I assume you are referring to is Exposure compensation. I've never heard it referred to as Av mode.

If I were shooting such static subjects at night, I'd just go ahead and use M. I wouldn't trust Av to meter the same for each shot with changing composition (i.e. if you include just a little bit more of the dark sky between shots, the meter is going to overexpose even more)

As for the overexposure in #2 and the bright lights. I think the only way to deal with this would be to take an High Dynamic Range(HDR) shot. Look up Auto Exposure Bracketing for your camera. This will allow you to take a shot at -2 stops, 'correct' exposure, and +2 stops. Then on the computer you can combine the photos to get 1 correctly exposed shot.

buurin, you are absolutely right....

On the Rebels XS there's a button that has both +/- and Av next to it. I associated them both with exposure compensation because they are so close together, but in fact they are two separate labels.

In some modes, holding that button while turning the dial will change exposure compensation. When you're in M mode, holding that button while turning the dial sets the aperture, hence the Av part. I should have caught that.

Oh yeah I used to had rebel(300D) and I remember that button/label. That is confusing.

ok took some of the ideas in here with fixing the photos ... here are some new trys in editing them ... any better?

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Both white balance and exposure seem much better to me now.

I don't know what you can do to recover the text. If you're using lightroom and shot in raw you can try the recovery slider.

The best thing to do is next time you shoot, keep these things in mind. Its much easier to do it right in camera than try to force it in your post processing on the computer.

well that was an extremely bright light under the wording. I could barely read it in person.

ok edited a tad more ... the extra area in front was making it look off i thought.


Before:

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Its still tilted, I think.