Night time in the city: exposure

[John Black]

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Totally agree with Chris. I assume everyone is using a tripod for this, shooting base ISO and stopping down to F8 or thereabouts. With Live View and the histo in realtime, this is so easy now. Just adjust the shutter speed up/down and decide how much highlight data to clip (or not). With the M-240's dynamic range, its single exposure capabilities are impressive -

 

 

It wasn't much different with the M8 / M9 - just test shots and looking at the histo to decide whether to lengthen or shorten the shutter speed. Generally, metering modes will over-expose for night shots because the metering system is programmed for 18% gray (or whatever Leica's spec is).

[chris_tribble]

Re hand held vs tripod all the shots in the Hong Kong set were hand held. Re base ISO they are all at 1600 ISO and mostly fully open with the 35 Summicron Asph. A tripod can be useful but for urban night time I prefer not to have to use one. At one level I don't see much difference in technique between the night time set and the ones I this day time set from the next day:

Select an appropriate lens for the task. Select an appropriate ISO and aperture for the light conditions and scene elements. Frame, focus, meter, expose.

For available light photography with a camera like the Leica, isn't that about it?

Edited January 23, 2015 by chris_tribble

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