A95 and night scene shots

[gmjones]

I am going to Las Vegas soon and I was wondering if anyone has taken any kind night shots like Las Vegas.

I would be interested what setting you used for such a shot.


Please help, its going to be a holiday of a life time so I want to try and get some great night shot photos of Vegas.

--
Gareth

[FAUguy]

I was in Orlando for a week. When taking pics at the Theme Parks at night (of people) I'd use the flash. However, of fireworks and things like that, when a flash would white-out the image, I'd use ISO 200 and 1/15sec shutter. They came out just fine.

[im_dragon]

If you are taking picture of someone standing a few feet away, then use flash. Otherwise, get a tripod (I use it whenever possible, night or day), set your ISO to 50 for best picture quality, turn off flash, shoot in Av mode so you can control the depth of field, prepare to wait several seconds for your shot to finish.

[ReF]

I went to vegas with the very similar a80. first off, you will NEED a tripod if you plan to shoot at night. I had with me a small pocket tripod which colapsed to 7.5 inches and maxed out at 42 inches (that flip out screen is so great to have when using low tripod heights). surprisingly, 42 inches was tall enough for all of my shooting needs - keep in mind that you will be photographing upwards anyways, so tripod height wasn't a big deal. you can bring a full size tripod if you want, but i went with my girlfriends so i didn't want a big tripod to get in the way having fun in vegas. anyways, vegas is pretty bright at night, so at an aperture of 4.5 i actually got away with using aperture priority (1 sec max long shutter) and many were taken at 0.8 sec. at f8.0 I used between 1.6-2 secs. in manual mode. all of my shots except for the ones on the stratosphere were taken at ISO 50. for people/night scene pics, I used f8.0 at 2.5 secs with the flash on, but only because my girlfriend and I could hold still that long. you could use ISO 100 or 200 to dramatically cut back the time needed. noise doesn't seem as visible with all the tiny points of light in vegas, except on your face. the stratosphere is a nightmare for nightime pics as tripods are not allowed. it's terribly wind outside and there are reflections off the glass indoors. outside on the observation deck you'll just have to used ISO 400, a large aperture, and as slow of a shutter speed as you can hold in high wind (i used 1/40, 1/30). don't worry, the high ISO will fight off purple fringing and the noise really isn't visible on that kind of scene. i managed to get a very nice nightime shot of the strip from up there, at 6 secs, f8.0, ISO 50 by using a steady surface but it took about 10 tries. I also could've used ISO 100 with less secs and I probably wouldn't have been able to tell the difference though. I'd also like to mention that I shot almost everything at f8.0. be warned that you cannot use the a/v cables to review your pictures on T.V. if you are staying at the stratosphere. well, i've got a headache so that's all I've got to say for now.