First Night Exposure Critiques welcomed!

[chuck41520]

I just recently got my Oly EM-5 and had been itching to do some long exposure photography. The night before the big storm up here in the northeast I grabbed my EM-5 with the kit 12-50mm lens and walked down to the pier to do some long exposure photography.

I am new to this so I would love some critiques and advice on what I could do differently or better.

Thanks in advance!

[jeeperman]

I am afraid you have forgotten the image.

[chuck41520]

First post! Had a little technical difficulty with the image. Figured it out though! Thanks for the reply Jeeperman!

[dje]

That's not a bad first attempt Chuck at this type of shot. One of the difficulties with this particular scene is that there are some very bright lights and then much of the scene is not very bright at all. The bright lights in scenes like this will often be overexposed and this doesn't necessarily matter but in your shot they are probably too much overexposed. To get more detail on the rest of the scene, you could take the shot after sunset when it is getting dark but before it is pitch black.

What settings did you use on the camera ?

Dave

[tbob]

I agree this is a good effort. Did you shoot at a low ISO? The building seems a little grainy.

[FrankMi]

Hi Chuck! As far as night photography goes, this is an excellent start. You will find that if you take a number of night images, over time you will come to like certain aspects of the scene that night photography enhances and you will find yourself honing your skills on capturing the emotion that those aspects convey.

One thing to note in this image is text. Text in any image is an attention grabber which can be used as a tool to direct the viewer to a specific location within the image - or, potentially toned-down to reduce the attention. The Smith Barney sign is bright and pulls attention to the top of the scene. If you find that this is undesirable for this image, try viewing the image with the sign cropped out and see which way you prefer the view. Hope this helps!

[chuck41520]

That's not a bad first attempt Chuck at this type of shot. One of the difficulties with this particular scene is that there are some very bright lights and then much of the scene is not very bright at all. The bright lights in scenes like this will often be overexposed and this doesn't necessarily matter but in your shot they are probably too much overexposed. To get more detail on the rest of the scene, you could take the shot after sunset when it is getting dark but before it is pitch black.

What settings did you use on the camera ?

Dave

I used ISO 200 (which is the minimum on the EM-5) F22 at 14.33 seconds on a tripod. It is quite bright but it does overexpose the image a tad, I agree.

[chuck41520]

I used ISO 200. I didn't do any post processing for this image and I wonder if I had the image reduction turned on for the image. I thought it was on by default, but I am unsure.