Cityscapes in low-light

Jason Parnell-brookes discovers the creative art of low-light cityscapes using long-exposure techniques with Nikon School UK

Make the most of the city after sundown with Nikon School

We joined Nikon School UK at the Centre of Excellence in London to discover the secrets of capturing creative low-light cityscapes. We started by brushing up on our low-light theory and then headed out onto the busy streets of London’s West End to capture traffic trails, before ending the evening at the Embankment. The practical course had lots of hands-on tuition from trainer Neil Freeman to ensure we made the most of our trip out on the town.

First, Neil discussed how camera settings and using a tripod are the two most crucial factors at play when shooting the city in low light. We looked at how a wide aperture, such as f/2.8, produces a shallow depth of field, perfect if you want to include a lot of bokeh (out-of-focus circles) in the background. However, stopping down the aperture to f/11 will create a starburst effect on stationary lights due to the effect of diffraction bending light as it passes the aperture blades.

Setting our camera’s base ISO, it was then important to decide the exposure length in order to capture the movement of traffic trails through our scene, creating motion blur, as can be seen in our main image. We saw how there’s no ‘one size fits all’ for exposure length when it comes to capturing the light trails, and that we need to keep the camera as steady as possible. Finally, we used a remote shutter release to trigger the camera’s exposure, but Neil pointed out that we could also use in-built camera settings like Mirror Lock-up, Exposure Delay mode or the self-timer to minimize camera shake. He recommended Exposure Delay mode over the other options, because it both locks up the mirror, reducing vibration (which the self-timer doesn’t do), and allows a preset delay timer to be set.