My First Post Tomorrow Land By Night.

[MJames81]

I took this shot on a Recent trip to Disneyland. I am trying to graduate from taking "Pictures" to taking "Photos". This is my first shot that I am placing on this Web site. Any Help, technical or Artistic would be appriciated.

Shot Info:
Canon T3I
55 focal Length
Shutter Speed 1/15
Ap. 6.3
ISO 100

[flytyer57]

I am thinking you should have taken a tripod. At 1/15 second, there's absolutely no way to hold a camera still enough to not get blurry pics.

[MJames81]

Fly. I did use a tripod for this shot, unfortunetly I did not have a shutter realease cable so what I did is use the Cameras timer. I think that is why the lights looks a little blurred. The Blurry thing in the middle is a ride spinning around so that is blurred on purpose to capture its Motion.

[suntoryjim]

Originally Posted by MJames81

Fly. I did use a tripod for this shot, unfortunetly I did not have a shutter realease cable so what I did is use the Cameras timer. I think that is why the lights looks a little blurred. The Blurry thing in the middle is a ride spinning around so that is blurred on purpose to capture its Motion.

For long exposures without a remote, I set the timer to 2 seconds and enable mirror lockup (Canon T2i). You can find this setting in Custom Function. This isolates all user-induced camera movement and ensures a rock-solid night shot. You can see the results in my post of my "Night view from my balcony" shot taken with a full 20 sec exposure.

[Doug Sundseth]

First, you have a dynamic range problem here. Your highlights are blown out. It's not just the lights themselves, but the haloing around the lights that is a symptom of overexposure. I think you're trying to get detail in the more shadowed areas, which works, but there's no way that you can capture the full range of darks to lights with a single shot. Since it's a shot with motion, blending multiple shots is going to be tricky at best.

I'd try to lower the exposure and recover some of the shadows in post, since that will allow for a shorter exposure. (I don't think you need quite this much time to show the motion that you're trying to capture.)

Second, the in-focus parts of the photo do look soft. This is not necessarily a result of camera motion. It's absolutely possible to hand-hold at 1/15 second, or even quite a bit longer (I've gotten usable shots at 1/2 second and longer hand-held), but it requires very good technique. One thing that's worked for me is shooting in burst mode to remove any motion induced during shutter press and release.

Basic focus can be really difficult in the dark, though. I'm not seeing an obvious focal object in the scene. Sometimes a flashlight can help to provide enough light to grab focus.

[Krusty79]

If you want your viewers to focus on the spinning lights, you should try to eliminate as many distractions as possible. There's a lot going on in this shot. It looks like there was a lot of movement in the foreground, which is distracting also.

I applaud your desire to take your images to the next level, but taking a tripod, shooting RAW and bracketing your shots will help you get there.

[MJames81]

Thanks for the advice. Alot Was going on while taking the picture, very crowded there and I was hoping to get a sense of how busy it felt there. Again thanks for the advice.