Golden Hour on the Bay

[rpcrowe]

Canon 7D: 70-200mm f/4 IS @ 150mm; ISO 160; 1/125 second @ f/4

[Brownbear]

Stunning and my favourite of your 3 night images... Actually I'm not sure but pretty close. You really are quite amazing at these night shots!

[rpcrowe]

I have a secret to getting good exposures for night and late evening shots of cityscapes:

Aperture priority exposure somewhere between wide open and one of two stops below wide open (unless I want to use f/16-f/22 to get star halo effect from point source lights. Depth of field is usually not critical in this type of shooting....

Auto exposure bracketing, at one stop intervals, with a -1 stop exposure compensation. This gives me three shots of the meter reading -2 stops, -1 stop and at the reading. IMO the bane of night photography is over, not under exposure. These three shots will also often allow me to do an HDRI composite. One of the shots will almost always be right in the ballpark as far as exposure.

Mirror lock up for slow shutter speeds...

Solid tripod and either a remote release or use the 2 second self timer to avoid camera movement because of the pressing of the shutter button.

Manual focus in many instances.

I like to use the grid in my viewfinder and will also sometimes use the level built into the Canon 7D

Finally, I tend to use a longer focal length than many other photographers because I don't like a narrow band of lighted buildings squeezed between large expanses of black sky and black water (except when there are nice reflections).

I always carry a flashlight so I don't fall and break my leg and also to adjust the camera...

However, the images seem a bit sharper when viewed in smugmug.com on my monitor than they do on CiC...

[travis4567]

Outstanding Richard !!

[Hui Song]

That is amazing.
Thanks for sharing your secret of "night and late evening shots of cityscapes"

[Donald]

Beautiful light, Richard. And a very good tutorial for all those wanting to make this type of picture.

[John 2]

Nice - and thank for sharing your approach.

[Mike Buckley]

Beautiful light, Richard. And a very good tutorial for all those wanting to make this type of picture.

Ditto. Also congratulations on your choice of focal length. It is a great example, contrary to common belief, that long focal lengths are not ideal for landscapes and cityscapes.

[Ken Curtis]

Well done, Richard, and thanks for the tips.

[rpcrowe]

Another pic during the fading evening light...

[Wavelength]

Beautiful

[flashback]

Richard,
Can I just send you to a particular area and have you do the nightscape for me? ;-)

[rpcrowe]

Jack P.: Sure, I'd love to return to New York for some night photography. I was born and raised in Brooklyn and left there to join the Navy (never to return except on vacations in my early years).

Along that line, I was hoping to get some night shots of Istanbul when I visited there in June of this year but, there were some political disturbances which made us decide that it would be a better idea to remain close to my hotel at night...

Regarding Mike Buckley's statement on longer lenses: I think that many photographers have a knee-jerk reaction to the thought of landscape and cityscape photography and think that, "I have to use a wide angle lens!" Unfortunately, IMO, wide and ultra-wide angle lenses are specific tools and (again IMO) are not always the best tools for this type of imagery.

I think that the majority of landscape/cityscape images shot with wide lenses are pretty boring. This is especially true when the rationale for using the wide focal length is to achieve maximum left to right coverage. The result is far too often a narrow band of some interest interspersed between a large amount of empty sky and an equally large barren foreground. Often that band has mountains, buildings, etc. so small that they do not have impact.

The wide and ultra-wide lenses really shine when you have a significant foreground subject, like an interesting rock or tree to achieve depth in the image...

As I was waiting for the sun to go down for my evening and night shots, I noticed three point source reflections from the buildings across the bay. I stopped down to f/22 in order to get a star-flare effect and this is how it turned out...