How to get ambient exposure at Ni......

[russellsnr]

Hi, When shooting at night both outside city limits and within when you have many lights from many sources and using flash how is the best way to get the ambient exposure?
Thank you
Russ

[Shadowman]

Unless the night is lit by the moon there won't be any ambient exposure. You have to create your composition using the available light sources.

[rambler4466]

Here is an idea about how to narrow down the guess work:

http://goo.gl/cItGlN

[DanK]

The easiest is to take test shots at a high ISO and then adjust the exposure when you set the ISO back to a low value. If your camera will do ISO 6400, that paired with ISO 100 makes the arithmetic simpler for very long exposures. ISO 100 and 6400 are 6 stops off. 2^6=64. So you will come fairly close if you figure out exposure in seconds at 6400 and then expose for that number of minutes at ISO 100.

There are a number of good introductions to night photography. One that I like is Mark Bowie's The Light of Midnight, http://markbowie.com/shop/lightofmidnightebook.

[Manfred M]

If you are using a Nikon flash, then the camera / flash integration will take care of any exposure issues. This assumes that the subject to camera distance is "reasonable" and a proper exposure is possible from the flash given the distance and ISO / aperture you are shooting with. Chances are that the flash will overwhelm most if not all of the ambient light.

[DanK]

oops. I missed the "using flash" reference. Scratch my suggestions, which were for ambient light.