Melbourne at night

[agriffiths]

I got bored last night and decided to mess around with some night shots of Melbourne.

I tried a couple of methods and ended up mixing multiple exposures into the one frame. It was time consuming but lots of fun. I think I'll try some more later on .

[Pehpsi]

I can dig it! Good colours and the traffic looks great. Think i like #2 better.

Got any exif info for me?

cheers.

[agriffiths]

Hey Pehpsi,

As mentioned previously there are a number of different exposures in each shot. I have mixed them in with Photoshop.

Both images were captured with the D70 in Manual and 18-70mm at 18mm. The first image uses a combination of one shot at 1/60 - F4.5 and another shot at 5 seconds - F9. Both were ISO 400.

The second image uses 1/60 - F5.6 to get the traffic taking off as well as a 6second - F5.6 and another 6second F8 to expose the trees and grass.

Cheers,
Griffo.

[Pehpsi]

Your right, you did mention it I have the attention span of a gnat.

I'm yet to put two shots together, i should have a crack though..

Cheers.

[sheepie]

An interesting approach, and quite a lovely shot of 1 Nicholson Street (the Orica building was, I believe, the first sky-scapper in Melbourne). I do find the higher exposure on the left of the first one a little too much though.

The second shot I think would be better without the road at all, it's a great skyline (if a little off straight ) which gets overpowered by the street.

I'd be interested in some more discussion from you on your experience with the blend. In partucular, whether you purposely used different f-stops and whether that complicated the blend for you or not.

Thanks.

[agriffiths]

Yep, I'd agree with you on the exposure. It was all in the name of experimentation though so I think I've left plenty of room for improvement .

We studied that Orica building at Uni and you're right, it was the first skyscraper in Melbourne. Although it's dwarfed by it's modern day equivalents. It was the first time they used curtain wall construction and the glass panes kept falling out due to bad chalking. I'd hate to have one of those land on my head!

The different F stops did make it a little difficult to blend the shots. Had I pre planned it I would have used the same F stop all the way through and saved myself a few headaches with aligning the layers. I was just snaping away without giving much thought as to what I was going to do with the final product... doh!

In the next lot I think I'll try to mix up the white balance a little to compensate for the red hues of the street lights. Looking back at the shots they seem to blow out the colour of the trees next to the roadway.

Thanks for the heads up on the horizon in the second shot too. I completely overlooked that!