Sydney by Night

[dan88]

Sydney Harbour by night...
C&C welcome!


18mm, f/7.1, 30s, ISO-200

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Dan,

Nice picture, I can see you have got a lot right with this composition;
- Perfect time of day (or night), some nice cloud detail
- 200ISO, so not too noisy
- 30 second exposure (at f7.1) has nicely smoothed the water
- composition has avoided having anything 'straight/rectangular' near the corners to show up the almost inevitable distortion at 18mm
- quite big so we can peer in at the detail
- only downside is it might be a tad over exposed for the highlights, I bet this would great as an HDR, or perhaps shot with a reverse GND, just to take down the direct city lights a bit - Colin may have some useful advice, since he does this sort of thing and I'm only speaking from gut instinct

Did I say I liked it? I do.

[dan88]

Hi Dave

Thanks for the comments. Sorry for not posting the EXIF data up - I normally would but I forgot... I have updated the post with it... I took about 20-30 shots (most 30s) of this scene but this one was the one that turned out the best. I tried my hand at a HDR image but it ended up being really out of focus when it came to the buildings on the other side of the harbour. I then attempted to play with the white balance and cropped it and basically that was all I did. Had to use liveview as the camera was on a rock and it was too difficult to look through the viewfinder where it was.

I think a GND may have greatly aided in this situation but yeah I'm not 100% sure. Not sure how many stop I'd be looking at to avoid the over-exposure.

[William W]

I particularly like compositional effect of the vertical refelctions of the coloured lights.

I would like your views on another crop of it - 1789 x 787 - loosing the bush, bottom right? Which brings the horizon 2/3.

I also admire that it was pulled hand held and braced - none of that sissy tripod stuff

Did you use Mirror Up?

WW

[kevinbythebeach]

WOW nice pic...great colors...very nice.....

its too bad the bridge on the far left isnt completly lit...it looks like a few girders dont have lights on...still very nice....id print and frame that baby....

[dan88]

@William W's comment

I also admire that it was pulled hand held and braced - none of that sissy tripod stuff

I have to admit, I'm a sissy! :-p it was a tripod shot. There was no way I could hold my camera still for 30s

In regards to mirror lock-up - I just set it to a 2s timer beforehand to avoid camera shake - no mirror lockup. To be honest, I still don't know where the mirror lock-up function is on my camera... I probably haven't played around enough in the menus to find it...

Cropped:


@kevinbythebeach - The bridge hasn't been lit for the past few months in those 2 spots. I'm not sure what the go is, but when it's re-lit, I'll attempt to shoot this again, maybe from a different location...

[William W]

Ah! I misunderstood the camera being on a rock and you not being able to look through the viewfinder comment you made . . . I pictured you laying on the ground with a bean bag around the camera and holding your breath

MLU is most likely Custom Function 12 (C.F. 12 = 1) - Canon tends to keep the CF the same through most of the models, though I have not used a 450D.

Re the crop . . . I look at my nightscapes and re crop quite often and I am just going through a 7 x 3 & 7 x 3.5 phase for a lot of my stuff: that ratio looked nice on your image, IMO. . .


what do you think?


WW

[William W]

The bridge hasn't been lit for the past few months in those 2 spots. I'm not sure what the go is, but when it's re-lit, I'll attempt to shoot this again, maybe from a different location...

Budget Cuts - seen the NSW Balance Sheet?

WW

[dan88]

Budget Cuts - seen the NSW Balance Sheet?

WW

LOL It's all KRudd's fault... Anyway, I'd rather not debate politics

[dan88]

MLU is most likely Custom Function 12 (C.F. 12 = 1) - Canon tends to keep the CF the same through most of the models, though I have not used a 450D.

Thanks! I will have to explore this

Re the crop . . . I look at my nightscapes and re crop quite often and I am just going through a 7 x 3 & 7 x 3.5 phase for a lot of my stuff: that ratio looked nice on your image, IMO.

I think it looks pretty nice on there. I originally cropped it at a 16x9 ratio but 7x3 works for me too as it doesn't keep the image looking so centred.

[Colin Southern]

Thanks! I will have to explore this


I think it looks pretty nice on there. I originally cropped it at a 16x9 ratio but 7x3 works for me too as it doesn't keep the image looking so centred.

Keep in mind also that - cropping aside - you can also digitally stretch them horizontally quite significantly, and it'll still look good (gives it even more of a panoramic look).

Other than that, looks good, although I suspect a little over-saturated, and in need of a wee sharpen.

[heather4279]

I like the cropped version

[dan88]

in need of a wee sharpen.

I have attempted to sharpen the cropped version (as this was everyone's preference) using the USM in Photoshop as well as run the image through a slight noise reduction using Noiseware Pro.

http://www.dj-m.net/cic_resize/sydne...op_sharpen.jpg
I would've posted the image here, but there was no point in resizing as it was my intent to show the original in order to get an opinion on that, rather than the resized version (which obviously wouldn't matter as much how sharp it was)...

I'm probably going to re-shoot this image with a GND filter when I purchase a few as I wasn't completely happy with how the city lights blew out the way they did. I also realised today that I shot on Tv mode rather than manual/Av mode and as a result the Aperture changed between the AEB shots that I took - which left me with no option to run the images through a HDR application as the sequential shots all had different focus... Once bitten, twice shy, hey?

C&C welcome as per usual and my apologies for resurrecting an old-ish thread