photos at night of jetties

[TRK]

Hi all

i am keen to take some shots at night of the local jetties and marina. I want to get the light reflecting off the water aswell as the boats and jetty. I have no idea whwere to start with this in regards to settings. Can anyone offer some advice?

[livio]

sure it is going to depend on three things, camera ISO how far you can push it, lens how quick is the lens and three ambient light. There is never going to be a hard and fast rule to cover this at ISO 100 at f/11 you might get away with a 22 second exposure. I would be inclines to start with an aperture as ig as possible depending on your lens for example if you have a f/2.8 lens use say f/4 and start with 10 seconds, then you can adjust up or down as needed. Going to recommend that you have a tripod for this hand held will give you some interesting photos but none will be clear.

Kind Regards
Livio

[Mark L]

As livio mentioned, need tripod.
What camera are you going to use?
Trust your cameras metering.

[Papou]

Pick yourself a good still night without wind, no moon if possible unless you want a certain atmosphere to your shot and most importantly if you setting up to shoot off a finger extension of the marina be aware that tidal movement over a period of time will affect the sharpness of your image:).
Be aware of your apperture settings to attain the depth of field for a clear image to the distance you want sharp in your image & depending on the light refected back of your subjects you can first try App priority to manual, to bulb setting, remote or cord shutter release to avoid as much camera shake as possible and shoot PLENTY of shots at diferent angles and shutter sppeds to again capture the light /lights you want in the image .And offcourse a tripod is a must..
Will try upload a recent shot of mine that i took at night at our local marina and knew what i wanted of the shot but had to just shoot heaps of frames at different speeds and apps to try catpure just the right amount of light without blowing out the highlights too much and ad nights end if i zoomed right up inmy image i can see where the tidal movement did effect the sharpnes of my image.
Tried using the ISO to my advantage also to a faster shutter speed to avoid the above but for the time being tis good enough though i do know i will have to go back and try n try again till i get what i want.
At present there's a lot of movement out of our local Marina due to the LNG plants construction hence wanting to capure as much as possible prior to it comming to an end..
Just a Trawler shot for the upload..
Yes i know :) the horizon needs straightening and it has been done in the ful sized image:).
91524

[Mark L]

^ so what's the ExIF data for this? It's the only thing missing from your useful post.

[Papou]

Will chase it up for you for sure:) at a guess it would have been a 30 second exposure for that particular one and at f8-11 as thats the range of most of the shots with ISO around the 400-800.
Exposure times for all shots that night went from 3o seconds to a 90 second time and as mentioned above f8-f11.
The shot i was mostly after was a barge loading trucks under ahuge overhead light to the left of that shot and again because of the tidal movement i didnt quite get the shot i wanted, but i will:)..

[Papou]

Okay my appologies:), It was F7.1 on App priority,13 secs @24mm using canon 24 -105L 5d11, ISO 400 and the following two were taken at the same focal length though around the 17 secs f8 and again ISO 400
http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/p487/papou0/IMG_4504_2.jpg
http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/p487/papou0/IMG_4502_3.jpg

[TRK]

sorry it taken me so long to say thanks, I have been very busy. Thanks so much for the advice.