Calgary at Night

cdub

Just a few shots of my hometown at night a couple of weeks ago, on a particularly pleasant evening. These are my first-ever efforts at shooting nighttime scenes... Let me know if I could have improved on anything. I found it particularly challenging to nail down correct exposure. Upon processing, some of the shots required heightened exposure levels which increased noise - in some cases to an unflattering extent... Cheers!

schmoo

Awesome, awesome lightscapes! What ISO were you shooting with for these? With long exposures and low light, yeah it's always best to get the timing right in-camera to prevent the additional noise but of course that's not always possible. I hope you get to keep going out and shooting... especially before the weather gets too unfriendly.

cdub

schmoo wrote:

Awesome, awesome lightscapes! What ISO were you shooting with for these? With long exposures and low light, yeah it's always best to get the timing right in-camera to prevent the additional noise but of course that's not always possible. I hope you get to keep going out and shooting... especially before the weather gets too unfriendly.

Thanks Schmoo! I was locked in at ISO 200 for these... I played around, but tried to keep my aperture at between F9 and F11 - sometimes venturing higher, but often not. My shutter speeds were between 25 and 30 seconds.

rwells

Really nice shots.

Too bad the third one is so noisy. That golden water is, well...Golden

canghuixu

They're all nice, but I really like #4.

davidryan

CW do you find it difficult to work with this time of night? The lights always pop a little too much for me, but that is a personal taste. I enjoy the colors in your photos and I'm thinking #4 is my favorite. I love those head/tail light pics-- no idea why but they're fun!

Wonder what these scenes would look like in the Blue Hour.

Dogdots

The first one is my favorite -- shows the skyline with houses too

cdub

davidryan wrote:

CW do you find it difficult to work with this time of night? The lights always pop a little too much for me, but that is a personal taste. I enjoy the colors in your photos and I'm thinking #4 is my favorite. I love those head/tail light pics-- no idea why but they're fun!

Wonder what these scenes would look like in the Blue Hour.

Thanks for the compliments... To be honest, I have no idea whether or not it is/was difficult, as this was the first time I've shot night photography. I shot these at about 10:30/11pm. I did find it challenging, but not knowing what to expect until getting home and then realizing what I might do different next time (exposure settings, compensating for lens flare, etc) the only thing I can say is I popped a lot of shots at various settings until I got what I was looking for... I think most of the success of these photos has to do with the composition of the subjects - the colors really stood out for themselves. I wouldn't attribute any of it to what I did, otherwise it was by complete accident. Just took lots of patience (especially waiting for the transit train to go by - every 15 minutes! - that's what the neon colorful lights are in #5).

marcpro

Good job catching the C-Train moving. I'll have to try that, I really like the neon-like colors that came out of it.

Cheers,

Marc (fellow Calgarian, eh).