Paul's Night Sky

A deep, inky-black velvet sky with pinpricks of diamond-white stars. This is most certainly Not Coming In Dubai. Even on a clear night, there's so much light pollution bouncing back from the humidity and dust in the air that the whole sky takes on the pinky-orange glow of high-pressure sodium.

My offerings are all straight out of the camera except for cropping to 800pix. I set up on a tripod and tried a whole variety of different shutter speeds and apertures. Here are the edited not-quite-as-low-as-the-other lights.

Natural

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 95mm
F/18 1.6sec
ISO 2500

This one is as close as I could get to what my eyes could actually see. The sodium glow over Dubai silhouettes the gate light and the edges of the buildings. The crescent moon is visible, but it's difficult to see the whole lunar disc.

Moody

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 75mm
F/5 1/6sec
ISO 2500

I think the second image is more pleasing to the eye because it expresses more of a 'night' aspect.

Short DoF

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 at 75mm
F/5 1/6sec
ISO 2500

See what happens at a wide F-stop? The gate light in the foreground falls out of focus. I wasn't sure whether this is a fault or a feature. Certainly, putting less important parts of the image in shot but out of focus can help to give an impression of depth.

Which is it, then: 'Natural' or 'Short DoF'?

TIME - Richard's Efforts

Okay its "TIME" this month folks so TIME to get your efforts in.

Inspiration didn't strike this month and running out of TIME so though I'd follow Mr. B's efforts and just use tenuous titles ;-)

To honor the departure of the Beckett's to Australia we went for a night TIME shoot of SZ road. Just had TIME to down load and PP so here are the results.
I'm sure Steven will post his HDR'd in TIME and Colin will have shot his but not downloaded yet as no TIME.


TIME spent with friends

EXIF
Canon 350D (Santa PLEASE help !)
Sigma 10-20mm
Av Mode, f22 min, about 13 sec.
-1/3 EV
ISO 100
Normal WB



What TIME is the next Metro

EXIF
Canon 350D (Santa PLEASE help !)
Canon 28-300 IS L
Av Mode, f22 min, about 8 sec.
-1/3 EV
ISO 100
Custom manual WB, shot the "white" off the track sides then tweaked in camera.



There has been some photoshop in these but not much by my standards ;-)
A sort of manual HDR composite.

I'm sure the rest of you can sneak some TIME for a couple of quick shots. Just how much time does 1/4000sec shot take.

Please take TIME and feel free with the C&C.

Cheers,
Richard B.