Tips for 'Light Night'

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nickl360

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Hello all,

Tonight it's Nottingham night light and there are going to be lots of buildings illuminated in nice colours and also some street acts throughout the evening.

I'm going to take my tripod for some long exposure shots of the buildings but I'm stuck for settings to float around on with the street acts as effectively it'll be in the dark.

Where should I meter?
Manual / Av / Tv?
Will rear curtain sync flash be ideal to capture movement?

Kit: Canon 5D mk2
Canon 24-105mm f4 L
Canon 50mm f1.8
Canon 580EXII

Also, does anyone else feel paranoid during the flash when the red light flies out?? Anyway to stop that?
 
Yes use 2nd curtain flash. The red beam us the a assist light, it can be turned off via custom functions but it's only used by the camera when it needs it due to not having enough light. Turning it off will give you a lot of out of focus shots.

What mode you use depends if you plan to use your Flash. If you do then try manual setting and somewhere around iso 1600, f4 and 1/40th to start then change settings as needed. The idea would be to get plenty of ambient light so that you don't have black backgrounds.

If shooting without flash then I'd probably use tv and set the shutter speed to prevent motion blur.

Do you have flash gels? They would probably be handy depending what the street lighting is like.

Feel free to ask anymore questions and let me know how you get on :)

Edit : your 50mm will probably be too long for this sort of thing aswell
 
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Thanks for your help, unfortunately I don't have any flash gels. I've got a flash diffuser which I'll use.

I think I'll probably use my 50mm lens at f/4, although the 24-105 has image stablising so might be better, what do you think? [EDIT]: OK so your edit answered this already! hah

The ambient light is something I want to capture along with the bright lights to avoid black surroundings.

I'll be sure to post any images that turn out decent in this thread.

[EDIT2]: I've also got a TTL cable cord so I'll use that to hold the flash up high for effect as desired.
 
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Bit surprised nobody else has offered advice. Since that's the case this will hopefully expand on my first post a bit

Things to watch out for with the settings I suggested would be contamination from the streetlights and motion blur depending how fast they move. Neither of which can really be advised on before hand. Not sure how much better the 5d iso performance is than the 7D but higher isos would probably be fine if you need them.
Maybe worthwhile getting some colour temperature orange and plus green gels for your Flash depending how often you use it. They can be used to correct for tungsten, fluorescent and if I remember right then combining them can correct for sodium vapour streetlights.

Edit : depending how far away you are the 50mm might be a handy lens to have but it wouldn't be my first choice for this sort of thing
 
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Thanks for the excellent advice, I assume noone else has replied because you have captured everything.
 
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