Night Cityscapes

Several folks have asked me to write about how I do cityscape photography at night. It’s really not all that difficult once you get the hang of it, but I thought it might be worth documenting the process I use so that others could use it as a starting point for their own experiments.

For me, this is a very enjoyable form of photography. There’s something magical about a skyline at night. It’s also a really good way to become familiar with light and how you can control your camera to capture it.

First thing, you’re going to need a camera that you can control manually. I shoot exclusively digital these days but film would work just as well. You’re also going to need a tripod.

I recommend you get to the location you plan to shoot from before sunset. It’s much easier to set up when you still have plenty of light. You’ll also have an opportunity to get great shots of your chosen subject during the golden hour as the sun sets.

As far as initial camera settings go, I set it to full manual. Since you’re going to be setup on a tripod and your subject generally doesn’t move you can manually focus it once and then just check focus from time to time. I set the camera ISO to 100 which is best on my Olympus E-3. Some cameras do better with an ISO of 200, so you’ll want to check this on your own camera.

My Olympus Zuiko lenses are generally sharpest with an aperture of 5.6 to 8 so I select something within that range. I’ll then adjust the shutter speed to get my desired exposure. You may need to experiment with the white balance setting to get something that you like. My E-3 does a good job on the auto setting so I generally leave it alone. I shoot RAW anyway, so I can adjust that in post-processing if desired.

After that point, you’ll control things using just the shutter speed. Your camera should have a built in meter that will help you select an initial setting, but you’ll want to experiment from that point. I’ll often select a slightly slower shutter speed to overexpose just a bit to get more glow from the city lights. The main thing here is to try different settings to see how they affect the final image. It’s a matter of taste, so play with it and have fun!

One final tip. To reduce the opportunity for blur, I recommend you use a wired or wireless off-camera shutter release. This eliminates any shake introduced from you pushing the shutter release. If you don’t have one, just use your cameras built-in self-timer if it has one. Your camera may also have an additional setting to lock the mirror up before opening the shutter to further reduce shake. To be honest though, I rarely remember to set this.

And that’s really all there is to it. I hope you enjoy trying this for yourself!