Night shots, failure, please advise

[Marco van Eck]

Hello,

After viewing a lot of very beautiful night shots I thought to give it a go myself. I drove to the beach, only to fail miserably

Using a Canon 650D with stock lens. Used manual focus, maybe I went totally wrong there as all the pictures I took seem out of focus. Next to that the lights are all big blops of light...


Here are the pictures, maybe someone can give me advise on how to get them better.


Scheveningen_Kurhaus_IMG_1552 by Co'tje, on Flickr - Settings: 1.6 sec ƒ/3.5 ISO 100 20 mm




Scheveningen_Kurhaus_and_Beach_IMG_1552 by Co'tje, on Flickr - Settings: 25 sec ƒ/7.1 ISO 100 29 mm

Tried several settings on this one from 1 second to the one above, being 25 seconds.


Thanks in advance for any tips!

Marco van Eck
The Netherlands

[HDNitehawk]

On a tripod?
Using live view to focus? Or through the viewfinder? Both pics are out of focus.

[DavidEccleston]

The lights are nice perfect balls, not trails, so that discounts camera movement, shake, etc. It looks like a nice solid tripod was used. It simply looks like the focus was off. For manual focus, try using live-view with 10x view mode.

[iND]

agree looks like a failure to focus

[HDNitehawk]

With a 20mm and 29mm lens at those distances shouldn't something have been in focus though.

[Andy Stringer]

I agree that the focus was off. Is it possible that you have accidentally moved the dioptric adjustment knob at the top corner of the viewfinder?

Try using Live View to focus on something then, without refocusing, look through the viewfinder and adjust the dioptric knob until the image appears sharp.

If you can, look at the EXIF data to check the distance that you were focusing. You can do this in Windows by opening the image in Windows Photo Gallery, right click the image and select Properties, then scroll down to see the focus distance.

[Sheiky]

I also think your problem is a focusing problem. The photos aren't moved(or at least not much), but they are simply wrongly focused.

Next to that the lights are all big blops of light...

The light blops are actually something that a lot of photographers like to achieve in their background. They are just out of focus highlights.
In your case doing manual focus on these two items shouldn't have been too difficult using live-view. Magnify your screen 10x and aim for a lightsource. Because the rest might be too dark to focus on. Adjust the focus untill the lightsource is as small as it can be. Because if a lightsource gets out of focus(either too close or too far focused) it will turn into a blop.
Also you could try smaller apertures to get more into focus, but to be honest I think this one was focused into infinity.

Hope you have better luck next time.

[Busted Knuckles]

I agree that the focus was off. Is it possible that you have accidentally moved the dioptric adjustment knob at the top corner of the viewfinder?

Try using Live View to focus on something then, without refocusing, look through the viewfinder and adjust the dioptric knob until the image appears sharp.

If you can, look at the EXIF data to check the distance that you were focusing. You can do this in Windows by opening the image in Windows Photo Gallery, right click the image and select Properties, then scroll down to see the focus distance.

Yep check the Exif data for focus distance - it appears to have been very short as w/ such wide lenses infinity setting would have a lot more clarity somewhere.

The 1st photo it would appear at 29 mm and f7.1 infinity would have worked for a big portion of the scene, ideally you would have focused short of infinity and let the DOF take it out to infinity.

The second shot of the building at f3.5 is going to have a narrower DOF - but at 20 mm it would still be fairly deep.

[Jayson]

I just scanned this quickly and everyone is giving great advice on tripod and live view focus, but this might not be the issue. If your using the kit lens (lens the camera came with) it has IS. The kit lens, I'm sure doesn't have the technology to be tripod sensing. Give this another try with tripod, live view focus, and make sure the IS is turned off on the kit lens and I think you'll have some winners.

Good luck!

[ahab1372]

Not sure if the 650D/T4i records focus distance. My T3i doesn't.
Edit: If it had been recorded, I believe it would be visible on Flickr, but it is not there, so I think it is not recorded at all