Metropolitan (Colored version)

San Francisco Downtown at night. Comments welcome.

Here is the B&W version of a different shot from same location.

Very good photo and composition. The only distracting thing is that the moon is blown out, but obviously couldn't be helped with a single exposure. Great detail. Cheers

You are absolutely right. I think a graduated ND filter should fix this. Thanks for stopping by.

Very nice photo and beautiful B&W version.

Nice shot. However, I don't like the grainy noise between the moon and the top of the buildings. Do you know why the sky is so grainy? Was this an intended effect? Did you shoot at very high ISO setting?

Satish, very valid point and good observation. The grainy noise is neither an intended effect nor caused by high ISO (the ISO is set at 125 for this shot). It is caused by the long exposure (D1X is known for this problem) and post process (color enhancement + sharpen). I have noticed that the later digital SLR's (such as Nikon D70 and Canon 20D) have dramatically improved the noisy problem caused by long exposure. Thanks for your comments.