City Landscape & night sky

[blade_922]

Hey,

Okay small dilemma here. Would like to take a landscape shot facing the city and include the night sky. I have tried and i seem to get too bright results over the lower part of the sky just over the horizon its pretty bright and ruins the shot. Im trying to get the stars trail in aswell. Is there a way to minimise this over exposure just over the horizon? Im going to try again tonight, clear skys. Will post up the results.

 

[Harvey_nikon]

a photo will help explain what you mean

If it is the sky being overexposed due to the city, use spot metering on the city and take a photo of that so its correctly exposed, then take a couple of more shots exposed for the sky then stack them in photosop.

Another option, would be to use a filter used to dark skies and use it upside down, is it a graduated filter?

 

[hollis_f]

Two ways of doing it if you just want city and stars.
As Harvey suggested, use a graduated ND filter. Trouble is it will need to be something like 6 stops. And your city horizon needs to be completely horizontal.
Best bet is to take two separate exposures at massively different shutter speeds (say, 10s for the stars and 1/10s for the cityscape) and stick them together in software.

To get the stars to trail will be very difficult.

 

[indiabravo]

Not very clued up on long exposures but as star trails require very long exposures would this not blow the highlights from the city lights?

www.iainbrooksphotography.co.uk

 

[Forbiddenbiker]

As hollis says or place a black card over lower half the lens for most of the exposure.

 

[callen9797]

pic might help, although sounds like a ND Graduated filter could be the answer.