Espanade Night Shot Try out

[airconvent]

First time I tried out the night scene capability of my Lumix FZ5 using a tripod.
Wanted to know how far it is from a DSLR. Have no real idea how to compose the images so I took the cue by following what some DSLR people were doing there!
I wanted to try my WCON7 and do a comparison but unfortunately, it was on loan to a friend so here are the images using purely the FZ5.
I noticed the images are not as sharp as I would like. I was told it was because on tripod, I should have switched off my Stabilisation mode. Will try again on next opportunity.
Would appreciate some advice on framing and feedback on camera night performance.
ISO left at auto mode. I basically tried aperture priority (nice), shutter priority (bad), manual, night scene and programme modes.

Cheers

http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020095.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020120.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020118.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020124.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020133.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020140.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020143.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020128.JPG
http://gallery.clubsnap.com/data/500/P1020173.JPG

[eow]

In manual mode
manually set the white balance(forget abt using a grey card or white balance against anything white..just manually wb it against the background u going to take..be it pitch dark or not.. trust me it work wonder )
use the smallest aperture and leave it at that play around with shutter speed on yr fz5 1sec to 8sec

[airconvent]

Originally Posted by eow In manual mode manually set the white balance(forget abt using a grey card or white balance against anything white..just manually wb it against the background u going to take..be it pitch dark or not.. trust me it work wonder ) use the smallest aperture and leave it at that play around with shutter speed on yr fz5 1sec to 8sec

hi eow,
thanks for the reply..can you elaborate on the wb thingy? how do I set it against the background?
also, on smallest aperture, I did tried it but the images became very dim, so I set it back to f/2.8...was that a mistake?
cheers

[eow]

Originally Posted by airconvent hi eow, thanks for the reply..can you elaborate on the wb thingy? how do I set it against the background? also, on smallest aperture, I did tried it but the images became very dim, so I set it back to f/2.8...was that a mistake? cheers

First went onto the wb menu and scroll to the last command(manual balance)
activate it & point the white balance thingy towards the direction of yr intended target
press the shutter and u will see that the screen is not longer yellowish in colour(white balanced corrected)


In order to have a certain degree of sharpness for yr night shot.. for any distance beyond 5 metres i either stopped down the aperture or set my cam to inifinity mode(denote as a mountain icon in the camera command dial)
by limiting the cam to f2.8 u are decreasing the depth of field..inherently making my pics softer...by all means if the f8 is too much..i'll up my shutter to 8sec... and do a little ps if necessary

[airconvent]

ahh...that makes alot of sense.
so the blurring effect is due to shorter DOF in f/2.8 mode..never occurred to me then
the manual can tell me what the camera can do but less on when or how to use it
thanks alot for the tips!
hope I have an opportunity soon to try it out..

cheers