Tuesday 17 September 2013

Review Digital Camera World 09-18-2013

Digital Camera World
 
Exotic travel ideas.

Searching for your next vacation destination? Subscribe to Off The Beaten Path, a newsletter featuring captivating locales to help you to plan your next trip.
From our sponsors
City at night: photography tips for taking atmospheric images of urban areas
Sep 17th 2013, 23:01, by jmeyer

The city at night is a fantastic place for photography. But you’ll want to get there just after sunset. In this tutorial we explain how the twilight hours are perfect for capturing atmospheric pictures of illuminated buildings and city landmarks.

City at night: photography tips for atmospheric images of buildings and landmarks

For great cityscapes you can't beat shooting at twilight: after the sun has set, but before the darkness falls, there's still enough natural light to bring out detail, while the city lights will be coming on to create extra colour and interest. Twilight doesn't last long though, so you'll need to be in position and set up before the sun sets.

For our shoot we headed into the heart of London to photograph St Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge from the Thames Embankment; for a successful twilight cityscape you need to include iconic or interesting buildings or bridges that are illuminated at night.

You'll need a tripod, and optionally an ND filter to stop down the light so you can shoot long exposures. Aside from enabling you to blur water and skies, long exposures have another use: if cars or people are passing through your scene and the exposure is long enough, they won't appear in the image – you'll need a shutter speed of between 15 to 30 seconds to achieve this.

How to shoot a night city scene

How to shoot a night city scene: step 1

01 Timing and location
To make the most of the twilight period you need to be set up ready to shoot in good time, so check the sunset time – twilight begins after the sun sets, and before the darkness sets in. Choose a location with buildings that have plenty of lights and illuminated windows, and other interesting features.

 

How to shoot a night city scene: step 2

02 Use a tripod
Set your camera up on a tripod so that you can capture long exposures. Make sure you place it out of the way of people passing by, as you don't want it to get knocked during an exposure. If it's windy you'll need to shelter it – you can do this with your body, or weigh down the centre column with your camera bag if it has a hook for this purpose.

 

How to shoot a night city scene: step 3

03 Camera settings
Set your camera to Av mode and set the aperture to f/16 – combined with the long exposure this will produce a 'starburst' effect from the lights in the scene. Noise can be a problem with long exposures in low light, so keep the ISO to 100 to counter this, and shoot Raw files for maximum quality.

 

How to shoot a night city scene: step 4

04 ND filter
To obtain a slow enough shutter speed to blur water and clouds you'll need a neutral density (ND) filter. We used a variable ND, which enabled us to control the strength of the effect by rotating the outermost filter. Half-press the shutter button to take a shutter speed reading – around 30 secs is ideal.

 

How to shoot a night city scene: step 5

05 Composition and focus
Switch to Live View mode to compose and focus the shot (this also means the mirror will be locked up to minimise camera vibrations). Compose the shot using leading lines such as a bridge or river to draw the eye into the scene. To focus, switch your lens to manual, then zoom in on a key feature (St Paul's in our case) and adjust the focus to get it perfectly sharp.

 

How to shoot a night city scene: step 6

06 Remote release
Use a remote release to fire the shutter so that you don't jog the camera at the start of the exposure (if you don't have one, you can use the 2-sec Self-timer option in the AF/Drive settings). Make sure you don't touch the camera during the exposure, and check your image is sharp when you've taken it.

Final tip
The rule of thirds is just as important when you're composing cityscapes as for landscapes: for our shot we filled the top and bottom thirds of the frame with the sky and water, and placed the dome of St Paul's on the left-hand vertical third line; we also used the diagonal lines of the bridge to lead the eye into the scene.

PAGE 1: How to shoot a night city scene
PAGE 2: How to edit your night cityscapes
PAGE 3: Other ways to shoot urban areas at twilight

READ MORE

10 common exposure problems every photographer faces (and how to solve them)
Night Photography: how to set up your camera to shoot anything
City photography: tips for taking pictures of buildings and cities
Bulb mode: how to get pro-quality shots in low light
Night photography exposure guide: free cheat sheet

Raw vs JPEG: how many pictures can you actually take?
Sep 17th 2013, 10:37, by jmeyer

In our latest Raw Tuesday post we turn our attention to file sizes and how shooting raw vs JPEG can make a big difference in how many images you can store on a memory card.

Memory cards get larger every year, but so do raw file sizes! And did you know that your DSLR doesn't just offer one type of raw file?

You can save raw files as 12-bit or 14-bit files in both compressed or 'lossless' compressed forms.

As an example, in our latest photography cheat sheet we’ve provided figures for how many pictures you can store using our Nikon D7100 and an 8GB memory card.

Simply click on our raw vs JPEG infographic to see the larger version, or drag and drop it to your desktop to download.

Raw vs JPEG: how many shots can you take?

READ MORE

Raw format vs JPEG: how much can you REALLY recover in raw?
Photoshop Curves Tool: 6 techniques every photographer must know
Image Sharpening: how to bring out more detail in your favourite photos
Raw Editing: what you need to know about white balance correction
Dramatic Lighting: how to create stylish portraits using simple Photoshop effects

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com.

If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

No comments:

Post a Comment