Nighttimes .....

First day off i get since the beggining of the week ( the shifts at the hospital are hectic ! ) , thought id do a lil cleaning and tidying up to this pig sty i call my home . Started on that , but i found myself here writing a post on night shots .

Thats the theme of the next outing and was the topic of our last CCC meeting ( Mr Wally did a great job with his "light painting" presentation , it was very inspiring and full of ideas to try ) .

Thought id also do a quick review bout the things ure gonna need if ure shooting nighttimes :

1) The best time is right after sunset , when the sky isnt really black , but rather shades of blue and purple ...
2) Ur tripod is a must ( were doing long exposures ) .
3) Dont forget to clean ur lens nicely , cause all those lights can bring out those stains badly .
4) Keep ur iso as low as possible to minimize this grain .
5) Do a lot of exposure bracketing , and dont forget to try HDRIs .
6) In case u wanna do nightime portraits , or just use shallow dof on nearby dark objects , u may need a flashlight to help the cams autofocus system ( the cams autofocus system usually focuses on the brightest things in the frame) ..
7) For all of u who have star filters , WHAT ARE U WAITING FOR , now is the time to use'm !, for those who dont , really small f stops like f 20 and smaller can give a similar effect in some cases.
8) Nothing wrong with combining light painting , flash , and urban landscape all in the same frame , get creative !
9) Now that i mentioned urban landscape , try not to forget to snap some urban nightime panoramics .

The pic up there was taken from the Gamaa bridge in cairo by urs trully .

I suggest u try this place out for a lil inspiration , its an amazing blog full of urban nightime landscapes ..