Landscape Photography with Point and Shoot

[nikon1]

Hi everyone, I am a first time poster. I fouund out about this site through the digital photography E-mail tips.

I have a Nikon Coolpix L18 point and shoot camera. When ever I take a night landscape photo ( I use the night landscape mode) and I look at the the LCD screen, the image on the screen appears really bright even though it is almost dark outside.

Should I adjust the exposure compensation to -2.0 or wait until it is completely dark before I take photos?

Also is it even possible to take nice pictures with a point and shoot camera?

Thanks for reading my E-mail

[wulf]

I've moved your question to a different section and given it a new title, since you are asking about landscape photography with a P&S camera.

I don't think the brightness of the screen is a good thing to judge by - it will seem brighter when there is less ambient light but that doesn't necessarily tell you much about how well exposed your image is. How are your photos turning out at the moment? Perhaps you could post an example?

Wulf

[nikon1]

Thanks Wulf. I don't have examples because I always delete them when they don't turn out. I will try and post an example the next time I get one. I get nice pictures during the day however. I set the White Balance on Auto and the exposure compensation on to 0.0 and it seems to work quite well

I have. always had trouble posting pictures on line. I have so many folders with pictures in them that I can't find half of the pictures I need.

If I can send you a picture of two from my camera. maybe you can have a look at them. I can send them to your E-mail if it is all right with you.

[kencaleno]

A Tip- you will get even better photos in daylight,if you set white balance to Cloudy,and shooting mode to P-shift, and exposure compensation to -0.3 ev-Try it. For night shots, use tungsten White balance. If you know what you are doing, you can get great shots with a point and shoot camera. Ken

[dcclark]

Originally Posted by kencaleno

A Tip- you will get even better photos in daylight,if you set white balance to Cloudy,and shooting mode to P-shift, and exposure compensation to -0.3 ev-Try it. For night shots, use tungsten White balance. If you know what you are doing, you can get great shots with a point and shoot camera. Ken

Good lord Ken, this is unrelated to the question!

Now, back to the questions at hand: what mode are you using on your point-and-shoot? My guess is that your images really are bright, because the camera is being tricked by the darkness -- it's probably using a long shutter speed to try to bring up lots of light, when that's not exactly what you want.

I'm not entirely familiar with your Coolpix, but I'm almost certain that it has a manual mode. You can play around with this mode, setting a large aperture (f/2.8 or f/3.5, for example) and a medium-long shutter speed (start at, say, 1 second). Take a few photos with different settings and look at them on a computer, not on the camera! That will help you get an idea of what good settings are.

Remember, LCD screens are always "lit up" when turned on -- even black pixels are still lit from behind. So the screen may trick you and not show what the photo really looks like either. Good luck!

[private]

the best way to show us your pic is to get a flickr account - its free ad then you can upload to that site and insert the pic here.

And not to defend Ken, (gasp) I think he may have been answering the question about is it even possible to get a good pic from a P&S camera...

[dcclark]

You may have a point -- in which case, I apologize. It's no problem to get good shots from a P&S, but you really have to be familiar and understand the camera -- it WILL try to do things for you which are probably not what you wanted.

[nikon1]

Originally Posted by dcclark

Good lord Ken, this is unrelated to the question!

Now, back to the questions at hand: what mode are you using on your point-and-shoot? My guess is that your images really are bright, because the camera is being tricked by the darkness -- it's probably using a long shutter speed to try to bring up lots of light, when that's not exactly what you want.

I'm not entirely familiar with your Coolpix, but I'm almost certain that it has a manual mode. You can play around with this mode, setting a large aperture (f/2.8 or f/3.5, for example) and a medium-long shutter speed (start at, say, 1 second). Take a few photos with different settings and look at them on a computer, not on the camera! That will help you get an idea of what good settings are.

Remember, LCD screens are always "lit up" when turned on -- even black pixels are still lit from behind. So the screen may trick you and not show what the photo really looks like either. Good luck!

Hi I use the landscape mode, I took another picture last night of my street and it turned out not too bad. It was a little blurry because I did not use a tripod.

I took the picture at 10:43 last night and although it was dark, you can still se the street lights illuminating the street.

I want to post it but I have trouble posting pictures like I said earlier. I can never seem to get it right.

[nikon1]

Originally Posted by private

the best way to show us your pic is to get a flickr account - its free ad then you can upload to that site and insert the pic here.

And not to defend Ken, (gasp) I think he may have been answering the question about is it even possible to get a good pic from a P&S camera...

I have both a Flickr and a Photobucket account.

[private]

to post a photo from flickr, copy the html code and paste in. We would love to see one of the pics you are talking about. It might be as easy as callobrating your moniter.