[Original-Tin]

Minute long exposure, was looking to get light trails from the cars on the street below.

[orangepeel]

brave man heading up calton hill at night!

[Original-Tin]

lol, place was almost deserted just the guy I was shooting with and some kiwis that were doing a fire twirling thing with flaming battons, got some nice shots of those guys.

[HHRC]

Not sure there's actually a great deal to critique here. I really like it. There is a little lost detail above the clock but even that doesn't cause a problem. Its good

[Original-Tin]

Thanks, took several goes to get the exposure right so that the clock tower was not just completely lost to over exposure, even as it is it is slightly over exposed which is where the detail will have gone.

Probably should have done a double exposure and a layer mask in Photoshop but I tend to try and keep post to a minimum.

[Rob Barron]

Interesting idea and compositionally it's fine. I think the minute exposure was a bit too long and is spoiling the main purpose, the light streaks. There are so many streaks here they look like the cars were being driven by drunk drivers and possibly a collision halfway up the road! The exposure is so long that the whole of the road is brightly lit as well instead of seeing a nice contrast between the light streaks and the darker road behind it.

Light streaks really do take a lot of 'playing' to get right but I think you've got the general idea going fine, just needs a bit more experimentation to get the balance right so that the image hangs together well. I am assuming the aperture was very narrow here in order to get good depth of field as the sky is surprisingly dark for such a long exposure.

Did you take any others that night Tin? Be interesting to see what else you came up with. I agree with your own thought that a shot taken purely for the clock face that could have been brought in would have helped. I agree that relatively reduced post-pro is ideal but when you are working with such unbalanced lighting, you are rather giving yourself too many disadvantages to overcome. The clock tower itself is a bit bright but the top of the clock tower is very dark so again balancing the two really would be better with a composite.

That's a good location and I assume you live nearby (not sure where it is myself but I am sure the Scots among us will recognise it) so get back up the ladder and see what else you can pull out

Cheers,
Rob

[Original-Tin]

The shot is looking down onto Princes Street from Calton Hill. Just had a look at the other couple of shots I took, the biggest problem with them, they were a 45 and minute at much high stop at 36, they both suffered from the smaller aperture not being as sharp and the trails were just not there.

Would have taken more, but it was getting late and really really cold.

Just had a play with the exposure and I might be able to get it looking slightly better so I might have a further go at it when I've got more time tomorrow.