night shots with Nikon D70

Hi, I am trying to shoot night street pictures where the lights

leave streaks behind the cars what are the right settings & lens to

use for that? I have a Nikon D70 with a AF-S DX ED18-70/3.5-4.5G

lens & a AFzoom-NIKKOR 70-300/F4-5.6G lens & several tripods also

would I use the same settings to shoot a ferris wheel at night?

Thank you, Leza

Where are trying to shot? A multisecond exposure is what you need.

iI am trying to shoot down main street in Huntington beach and pacific coast hwy they both get alot of car traffic and main street is all stores on both sides also at the Balboa Fun Zone tha's where the ferris wheel is over looking the harbor waters. does that help? I really need to know exactly how and where to set and find the settings please...

There is so much variability in the lighting with night scenes that you'll have to experiment a little. The lens you use would depend on how much of the view you want to get in your image. I would think the 18-70mm would be good. I would set the metering mode to manual ("M"), set a medium aperture (f/5.6 to f/8), turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction, and put your camera on a tripod. As far as shutter speed goes, I would bracket exposures at 10, 20, and 30 seconds or longer. (If you use anything longer than 30 seconds you'll have to use the "bulb" setting and time the seconds yourself.) You could experiment with different ISO settings, too, but I'd start with 200 or 400. You'll be able to see your results immediately using digital, so you can experiment with different f/stops, shutter speeds, and ISO to see what works best in each situation. You might want to get the ML-L3 Remote Controller to fire your camera with so you don't have to touch it to release the shutter.

<i>the lights leave streaks behind the cars</i>

 

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It sounds like you want the cars to show up, more or less sharp, in the images. The typical way to produce this style of image is to use flash in "rear-curtain sync" mode with a realtively long exposure. See page 95 of the D70's user manual. In this mode, the camera's shutter opens, and the lights on the cars leave their streaks across the film or sensor. Then, just before the shutter closes, the flash fires, freezing images of the cars at the ends of the streaks. If you just use a long exposure without the flash, then you'll record only the streaks, and the cars will be pretty much invisible.

 

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Chances are, you're going to want a more powerful flash than the D70's built-in flash.

 

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--Bill

Without wishing to appeart rude; It's digital, go and try it out.

 

In the old days we had to learn how to do this with film, we'd experiment and it cost us money, but it was fun and we learnt stuff. In the time it'll take you to sort the good answers from the bad you could have shot a hundred frames (for free). Learning has a price, that price is now lower than it ever has been, but you won't learn anything truly worthwhile by sitting on your butt staring into a PC, go out and shoot some pictures - it's great fun, and isn't it why you bought the camera :-).

Good point! Even though I only have a digital compact the free cost of digital experimentation is really great.I have tried this with my digital compact by taking some 4 second exposures where I live of the traffic.I got some interesting results to say the least!

Paul, I did go out and try it first and tried lots of settings & no good results that's why I'm asking for help!

Lisa,

Its quite variable, but as a starting point, put your camera in Shutter Priority mode, set it for maybe 10 seconds, and trip the shutter as cars are about to drive by... also yes, that's the same setting you'd use for ferris wheels. I have some lame examples here from when I was trying out the technique:

<br>

<a

href="http://adnan76.com/fair_web/index.html">watch for carnies</a><br>

The first was 4 secs, f/10, ISO100. The second was 4 secs, f/20, ISO 100. Have fun!

adnan, beautiful carnival pictures. I like the way they make machines that are always

grimey, unsafe, and sad looking in daylight, look so modern and perfect.

Here is my two cents from my limited experience:

 

1. Skip Noise Reduction for now--it makes the shots take twice as long and, while learning, you are better off with more, slightly noisier shots.

 

2. Manual Focus--your camera will probably not want to focus so use hyperfocal distance or just set to infinitely for must subjects. Remember to set the camera back to Auto Focus when done--I always forget to do this :-(

 

3. You might try taking your pictures at dusk instead of at night. This depends on what your trying to do, but I find shots more interesting with a little bit of background. For example, I find this shot http://tinyurl.com/afz5k (shot at dusk) more interesting than http://tinyurl.com/dfxtb (shot at night).

 

4. Use a tripod, but don't worry about a remote trigger--the shots will be long enough that a little jitter at the start won't matter.

 

5. Set the camera to shutter priority. Try from several seconds to 30 seconds. Use EV compensation to adjust exposure. All else fails: manual exposure.

 

6. Headlamp really useful to see controls...

 

Good luck.

 

Parting picture: http://tinyurl.com/cq4o2

so you can read the dial instead of just turning it around blindly.

I have even used neutral density filters so that my Nikon 5700 would have along exposure when working at f/8 in Aperture Priority.

Thank all of you for your help I am getting their and will post a photo when I get one I'm happy with tonights shots were close will try again tomorrow night! Thank you

As the guys have said experiment but Tripod is fairly neccessary. Although this photo was hand held. I shot it at 2.5 seconds no flash at around f 7.5 But I wanted the vehicle in the shot.<div></div>