Hi you're watching AdoramaTV and I'm Doug McKinlay.
In today's segment we're going to look at some of the do's and don'ts of getting some of the really great
evening and night pictures.
AdoramaTV presents, Stay Focused with Doug McKinlay.
First and foremost we need to find the right spot,
if you know your city really well, you're already ahead of the game.
A little trick I use is I carry a little notebook with me all the time
so when I'm working, whether it's here in UK overseas,
if I see something that might be interesting for an evening shot I just mark it down,
simply writing down a location and one or two lines about why its interesting.
The next we have to think about is logistics. Primarily what I mean
is where and when the sun sets, of course this will be different where you are located.
But for here in the UK, I prefer to shoot from late autumn
through early spring. I just find the sky much more interesting at these times a year,
plus it has the added advantage of I'm not struck out until 11 o'clock in the evening
every night like I would in the summertime.
Like all successful photography
preparation is key. Once you've find your location
its time to consider a few of the technical aspects of what we want to achieve.
What lens will I use? How much movement if any
do I want to include in the shot? Is my tripod sturdy enough to carry my heaviest lens?
Once you've crossed all these t's and dotted those i's, it's time to get down to making
serious pictures. So we're in our spot,
we're here before the sun has gone down, it gives us lots go time to get set up. The
camera is on the pod, I've chosen my f-stop, I've chosen my lens.
I know that the London Eye behind me and the
London Assembly buildings are going to be lit up at night. The London Eye will be moving,
so I want to show some of that movement, so a really slow shutter, I'm guessing 30
seconds to a minute maybe more.
It also gives it a nice icy sheen-like affect on the river
its not such a bad thing either if the boats go back and forth, because you'll get the trailing lights going
through the picture. Now in terms of white balance, I tend to shoot
auto and adjust in the computer when necessary. When I'm shooting
I tend to shoot a few minutes apart and just check my LCD screen every now and then
to make sure that everything is sharp.
But we're going to be using slow shutters therefore we cannot touch the camera.
You either have to use a
cable release, or a 10 second timer on your camera.
So now its a bit of a waiting game, we're waiting for that light to start to fade a little bit to give
us a little bit a movement.
So the light is getting perfect
the sky and the foreground are starting to even out, I'm going to get some nice slow shots now.
I'm just going to take one.
I got a 3 second
exposure at f/11, its going to give me a nice sheen on the river,
a nice slow action on that wheel. It's not bad,
but I want better. I want this to be really slow,
I want those colors and that movement to jump out at me, a little more waiting.
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So the light is getting really nice now, and I'm going to make progressional pictures,
I'm going to stop down the aperture to f/16 and increase my shutter speed. 25 seconds
and then 30 seconds plus. So 20 second exposure,
you can see the river is starting to get all glassy, nice and glassy,
ice-like, but I'm still unhappy with it, I want it to be slower still.
Once we're past 30 seconds
we need to switch to bulb. Now for our purposes tonight we're using this
cable release thats got a locking system on it, so once we lock it
the shuttle will stay open until we unlock it, it's more or less a guesstimate.
I'm going to leave it on for like 45 seconds, so I'm going to count in my head
before I let the shutter go.
Now thats what I'm talking about, thats a picture.
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