Skyline photos, help!

[StreetDoc]

Hey guys, these shots are taken from the planetarium in chicago. I wanted to get some pictures of the color on the buildings for breast cancer awareness day. I'm not satisfied with the sharpness of the photos though. What am I doing wrong? Feel free to edit just tell me what you did so I can learn!

-Nick











This one is probably my favorite:

[StreetDoc]

I guess I should have mentioned these photos were all taken on a tripod using the 5sec timer.

[Didache]

Hi Nick - it's a bit hard to assess sharpness on a monitor's resolution. But, can I ask how you set the iso? If you left it up to automatic, the odds are that the camera would have set it quite high in that light and hence you will have noise which will affect the crispness. Also, what post-processing have you done, if any? Finally, are these to be printed, and to what size? The answers to these questions will help to giving you a sensible answer.

For the record, they look very attractive images.

Cheers
Mike

[StreetDoc]

Thanks Mike, the photos were shot in manual mode with an ISO of 800. White balance was set to auto, and close to if not at F/16, with a shutter speed of 4 sec. These are recommendations I found in a book I have for shooting at night. I understand a lower ISO would make them more crisp/less noise but is it possible to do so at night? What other adjustments would I have to make? I tried some night shots with the white balance set to daylight but it looked to warm for my taste so I left it on auto. If they are printed it would be 11x14 at the largest.

Post-process adjustments include some minor cropping, level adjustment, and some saturation adjustment. The first photo I also used a cooling filter in photoshop, unfortunately that's about all I know how to do as far as post-processing.

Thanks,
Nick

[readingr]

Thanks Mike, the photos were shot in manual mode with an ISO of 800. White balance was set to auto, and close to if not at F/16, with a shutter speed of 4 sec. These are recommendations I found in a book I have for shooting at night. I understand a lower ISO would make them more crisp/less noise but is it possible to do so at night? What other adjustments would I have to make? I tried some night shots with the white balance set to daylight but it looked to warm for my taste so I left it on auto. If they are printed it would be 11x14 at the largest.

Post-process adjustments include some minor cropping, level adjustment, and some saturation adjustment. The first photo I also used a cooling filter in photoshop, unfortunately that's about all I know how to do as far as post-processing.

Thanks,
Nick

When I take shots like this at night I use ISO100 F22 and a long time on a tripod.

You don't really care if something moves so whats the rush - get the quality.

Roger

PS. Nearly forgot - nice shots - you need to watch out for the bright lights on the front there.

[DrRoebuck]

Since you have a tripod, you can shoot at your lowest ISO.

Also, for better colors, I would strongly recommend shooting something like this JUST after sundown, with the "indoor" or "incandescent" white balance setting. You will get much better color this way, and you'll have a nice, dark-blue sky.

[markfielding]

I would use ISO 100 in this case. There is a noticable amount of noise in these shots, especially the sky. I love the different colours reflecting off the water from the buildings in the 1st shot. You need to get rid of those nasty dust spots too (the bane of my life).

[reverberation]

looks like film to me. I like these shots, the tonal gradation found in the sky is nice.

[freygr]

I would also set the quality setting to RAW+basic JPG. RAW will let you do the color balance when you edit and since you going to print at 11 X 14 save to TIFF after the edit. With JPG the compression will pixelize the small color versions in the sky. Beside you would be going from 12 bit color depth to 8 bit color depth as JPG only supports 8 bit color.

[Speed]

I don't have a lot of experience shooting skylines, but I shoot them at ISO 100 with the White Balance set to tungsten.

Here's an example, and the only post-processing done to this image was to join two photo's to make a panoramic.

[GB1]

Nick - I do like the shots, but feel that the water does not add anything in the shots. Sometimes it will, but the reflection isn't clear enough this time. I would crop out the water in each and level them, see what you get. My favorite's the top one btw
GB

[freygr]

Nick the JPG compression is adding noise to the sky.