Skyline Photography dilema - Photography Help Forum

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Q. Skyline Photography dilema

Asked by Kevin Greggain (K=2572) on 3/12/2002

I'm having difficulties regarding distant skylines on dark nights. I have read some charts by Kodak which says to run at F2 for 1 second when using 200ISO film. First, my lens supports f3.5 and smaller, but I would also assume a tighter aperature with longer exposure is more preferred.

The skyline is the Harrisburg PA one, and I'm having difficulties not getting oversaturated light. I've seen some beautiful skylines taken, and I know as I experiment that I'm learning, but ideally, I want a longer exposure with a smaller aperature, but I've dumped a fair number of rolls here.. Does anyone know of some sort of guideline for this particular type of photography ? Thanks in advance.

Mark M (K=33) - Comment Date 3/13/2002

Kevin, I've done some of this and from my experience it is hard to get great skylines at night but quite easy to get shots at dusk when the sky still has some color in it. At night the lights in and on the building are so much brighter than the ambient light that you can't expose one well without botching the other. You either end up with well exposed lights floating in black sapce or well exposed objects and buildings with big ugly overexposed areas. At dusk, when the sky reaches that deep blue color there are a few minutes when everything is balanced nicely. During this time I take a spot meter reading directly off the sky and use that for my exposure. I normally end up with something around f/11 @ 8 seconds with ISO 100 film give or take a stop. You are right in thinking that you want to stop down more than f/2. As long as you have a tripod stop down to the middle apertures or your lens and adjust the shutter speed accordingly.

Kevin Greggain (K=2572) - Comment Date 3/13/2002

Thank you -- that not only says a lot, but it explains all my floating light photos (heh).. I am going to try a dusk shot. I have a spot meter, and it is usually more accurate than spot metering on my PZ1P and 5N Pentax cameras -- I will give it a shot. Thanks once again.

Robert Stewart (K=15) - Comment Date 3/14/2002

Kevin,
I like Mark's answer. I would add to it that you may want to bracket around that exposure. A shot like this is one of the few times that I'll bracket in a fairly large range as much as 1 stop over and 1 under ( in half stop increments). I've found that the most pleasing effect may be somewhat subjective.

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