How do I capture vivid night cityscape colors like Venice or Bruges canal scenes?
Asked 4/11/2013
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2 answers
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I’d like to photograph night cityscapes with street lights, reflections, and buildings along canals, similar to scenes in Venice or Bruges. What camera settings and shooting technique should I use to get bright, colorful results without losing detail in the lights or shadows?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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Long exposure and probably HDR.
Put you camera on a good tripod, set you camera to manual focus and to shoot raw.
Set your aperture for the DOF - that would be a small aperture (high F number) because you want everything in focus
Set your ISO low to minimize noise
Now start with a pretty slow shutter speed (for example 10 seconds) and take a test picture, if your picture is over exposed use a faster shutter, if you don't get a picture as bright as the examples use a slower shutter.
If you get a single picture you like you will have to post-process it, the white balance will most likely be completely wrong (but that's ok because we shot raw) and for such exaggerated colors you will need to play with the saturation and vivid settings.
If you can't get a single well exposed image (if there are lighted and dark area in the image it's likely you will either over expose the light area or under expose the dark one) - than take multiple images from everything under exposed to everything over exposed at 1 or 2 stop differences (changing just shutter speed) and use HDR software to create a single image from the set.
Originally by user2481. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2481
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Use a tripod and shoot long exposures at low ISO. For this kind of scene, keep ISO low to reduce noise, choose a small aperture for broad depth of field, and adjust shutter speed as needed—often several seconds. Start with a test exposure and lengthen or shorten the shutter until the overall brightness looks right.
Shoot RAW, because night scenes often need white-balance correction and benefit from extra flexibility for recovering highlights/shadows and boosting color in post-processing.
Manual focus is helpful so focus doesn’t shift between shots. Use a self-timer or remote release to avoid camera shake.
If the scene has very bright lights and deep shadows, one exposure may not hold all the detail. In that case, take multiple bracketed exposures from the tripod—same focus, aperture, and ISO, changing only shutter speed—and blend them with HDR/exposure blending. A common starting point is one normal shot, one darker, and one brighter.
Much of the vivid look in example images comes from post-processing: correcting white balance, adjusting exposure/contrast, and increasing saturation or vibrance carefully.
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