Mick Hunt Photography

Ever since I bought my new camera in late January I have been eager to test it out with a bit of night time photography. The main reason I picked the Canon 5d mkiii over the mkii was for its vastly improved AF system, which will prove invaluable for Weddings and Portrait work in general.
Another big plus of the Mkiii is how well it handles noise in low light conditions when using high ISO settings.
Noise for those who may not know is grainy specks that you may see when you take a photo at night with your standard point and shoot camera or the standard smart phone.
I am well famillar with shooting cityscapes at night where generally you are working with fairly decent street lighting, so composition and controlling the camera is never a problem.
Shooting in complete darkness brings its own set of challenges, composition can be tricky and often takes a few test shots in order to find a perspective you are happy with.
Also a torch is an essential piece of kit to have on hand.

The settings for this shot were as follows

ISO 1600
24-70 f/2.8 lens at 24 with manual focus
f/2.8 10 seconds exposure
bit of light painting on the barge with a small led torch
AV mode was used here, generally I would opt for the fully manual mode but as time was tight I didn’t have the time for any longer exposures so AV did the job.