Evening-Night Exposure

[rpcrowe]

I will have the opportunity to take this hour and a half evening cruise to photograph the Cormorant Fishermen during the evening/night at Guilin China, this coming April.

http://www.guilincts.com/en/tour_detail.asp?id=10

What would be the best way to determine the exposure? There appear to be two general types of images and generally three times to shoot:

Types of images: 1: fishermen with mountains in background and; 2: shooting down on a fisherman with only water as background

Times to shoot: 1: While it is still daylight (no problem with exposure); 2: Magic Hour right at dusk showing fisherman, lantern and hills in background (an example of this is the bottom right image in the web site image group and is my favorite); and 2: night with lanterns as the only illumination.

Any suggestions or ideas regarding exposure for the Magic Hour and Night shots. I will be shooting in Raw and I will most likely bracket my exposures in chancy situations like this.

I will have a pair of cameras with me (Canon 30D and 40D) on my China trip, along with three lenses: Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS; Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS (I have been using this lens with success in low light levels and seldom carry my 50mm f/1.8 Mark-I) and a Tokina 12-24mm f/4. I will also have a lightweight tripod and a lightweight monopod with a Manfrotto monopod pouch. I will also have the miniature Canon 270EX flash with me on the trip but, I plan to use this tiny unit for mostly fill during day shots and don't plan to use flash on the river trip.

BTW: I really want a collection of Cormorant Fishing images. There are three ways to shoot the fisherman.

1: Shoot from shore or from the Guilin Bridge which is pretty chancy and not what I plan to do.

2: Hire a fisherman to take me out in his boat which would also be a chancy affair since I will only have an afternoon in Guilin to arrange hiring the fisherman, I speak absolutely no Chinese and, I am not keen on carrying two valuable cameras and lenses on a bamboo raft.

3. take this boat tour which will give me the best chance of photographing the fishermen in action since the boat operators pay off the fisherman to fish in the vicinity of the tour boat. It will also be a larger boat and therefore a more steady shooting platform.