Town Clock

[Greg McCary]

This is a re-shoot. I over exposed on the last one. I shot this one two stops lower than it metered. Can anyone give me some tips on metering night shots like this?

[EOSThree]

What camera are you using Greg? In looking at all of your posts the colors seem a little bit off, like maybe a cold white balance was used or maybe the wrong film was used. The saturation level seems a bit low also.
Try spot metering your subject, using a smaller aperture like f11 or so, and letting the camera choose the shutter speed. Also use a lower ISO, the higher ISO is only adding noise to a subject that will be naturally noisy. To get all of this to work for your without being blurry, a tripod or some other support should be used and a remote shutter or the timer used to actually trip the shutter. The photo is nearly 2/3 black sky and 1/3 brightly lit subject, this will fool a meter unless you use partial or spot metering. The spot meter will meter only a small portion of the scene(you should meter your subject at the center of the frame then recompose as necessary noting the settings when you metered the scene, or continue the half press while recomposing, or press the exposure lock if your camera has one). This should render your subject correctly exposed the rest should fall into place.

[Greg McCary]

I am using a Canon Rebel film camera. I used 400 ISO. This shot was at f/11 and 1 sec. I did use a tripod.

[EOSThree]

The color problems are probably in the scan then, or maybe in the processing. That is one of the problems with film, you have to find a good lab. I haven't shot film in a while, but the last 10 years I did shoot film I used color slide film almost exclusively, the processing is harder to screw up, and you get better more accurate prints from it. I usually try to use ISO 100 or less no matter where I shoot. I liked Fuji Provia, or if I really wanted saturated colors, Fuji Velvia. It sounds like you shot this pretty close to how I would have, except I would have bracketed 2/3 of a stop to make sure I got the result I wanted. The brightly lit clock is still a little over exposed.