Night Photography in Singapore

Night photography! We meet again! After I learned some lessons from the night photography in Malacca, I'm giving myself another chance to try it out again:)

 Alright, this time with lower ISO, which is around 400, I was able to avoid getting noise at the darker region of the photo. The original photo was way too colorful and none of the color stood out, so I've decided to made it black and white:)

 For the above picture, I attempted to use the tilt shift effect so that the trees will look miniaturized.

Yes, I've made it black and white again for the same reason:)

How about some vintage effect instead of black and white? Let me know what you think about it:)

Garden's by the Bay! It's very different from the usual night photography here because the super tree itself is bright. Without proper exposure control, the top region of the super tree would appear to be over exposed. Since its reflection on the water were weaker compared to its actual brightness, a filter was used to lower  down the brightness of the actual super tree. 

Alright, I know what you're thinking, the super tree was overexposed right? Yes you are right, and that's just how difficult to find the right balance between all the settings. Furthermore, I did not bring a timer to perform bulb mode again(sigh). So all the shots taken were below 30 seconds of shutter speed:( 

Voila! a closer shot of the super tree! Thanks to the 16-35mm wide angle lens that I brought along, I was able to capture it when I was directly under the super tree!

The lesson: Please bring along a timer to try out bulb mode next time:p

Night Photography in Malacca

Finally I've got a chance to do night photography! Dad picked me up by using his motorcycle and we started to look for nice scenery in the Malacca town. When we were at the bridge that leads to the Jonker Street, I mounted the DSLR on a tripod to take some shots. I've made a mistake though.

 I realized that I've pumped too much ISO (1000!) because I thought the sensor would not be able to see much of the details at night. I've forgotten that all these can be compensated by using low shutter speed since I brought a tripod along. I realized that there were lots of noise in the sky when I reviewed the photos in my computer, and that's because of the high ISO I've used. Speaking of high ISO, I think that would be the reason why I was able to shoot in the manual mode instead of the bulb mode. The manual mode could only take maximum 30 seconds of shutter, which is relatively short compare to bulb mode with manual shutter speed set by the photographer by using a timer(which I don't have). 

Interestingly, diffraction of light occurs as the aperture becomes smaller. When it happens, bright lights such as the street light becomes star shaped. Sadly, another mistake I made was the use of the smallest aperture, F22! I learned that photo quality degrades as the aperture size decreases. Initially I thought F22 would give be the "best star shape" from the street lamps. 

However, soon I discovered that F11 onward would be able to give the result, without making the photo quality worse. Everything was shot in RAW, so that all the details were preserved for editing purposes. Well, I couldn't stay in Malacca longer due to my CCA commitments in Singapore. I would definitely try night photography again in Singapore!

More photos:)

Light Trails

Another light trails:)