Our Trip 10th to 16th Feb

[RockNRoller]

Question for you. Your night shots look awesome and when you click on the photo and follow the link to flikr you get the information on the image. Your shutter speeds are slow, do you use a tripod or are your hands just that steady? If you use a tripod how do security react? Last year I took a monopod and they were worried I would have other uses for it.

ps your photo's cost me big time, my wife said "why don't your photo's look that good?" so I have had to buy a new camera.

[grovesie]

Question for you. Your night shots look awesome and when you click on the photo and follow the link to flikr you get the information on the image. Your shutter speeds are slow, do you use a tripod or are your hands just that steady? If you use a tripod how do security react? Last year I took a monopod and they were worried I would have other uses for it.

ps your photo's cost me big time, my wife said "why don't your photo's look that good?" so I have had to buy a new camera.

Thanks for liking my photos. On this trip the photos were taken handheld. I did have my tripod with me but wanted to try my new lens and camera. To get good night shots you need 3 things

!- Steady hand
2- Low F-stop. My new lens is a F2.8 throughout the zoom.
3- high enough ISO setting

For many of my shots I take up to 50 shots getting the right settings. too high ISO and the picture suffers from noise, grain effect, too slow a shutter and then you get blur. I also take the pictures in batches of 3, as often the first is a little off as there's a little motion when you push the button to take the shot. You will get there it just takes a ittle time to get a rough idea of settings.  Most of the magic happens in the post processing, where noise can be reduced, images sharpened etc