Exercise 4.7 - Outdoors at night

The task was to take a couple of pictures outdoors at night.
I decided also to practice with different white balances there. I took 4 pictures - with white balances set to Auto, Fluorescent, Tungsten and Sunny. Then, I have chosen two out of them that looked the best. these were shots taken at white balance set to Auto and Sunny. Both Fluorescent and Tungsten gave too much of  blue colour.

70mm; f/16; 3 sec; white balance - Auto

70mm; f/16; 3 sec; white balance - Sunny

Out of these two pictures I like the one taken with "Sunny" white balance the most. It gives warmer colours and more natural tones.

120 mm; f/16; 3 sec; white balance - Auto

120 mm; f/16; 3 sec; white balance - Sunny

In this case both "Auto" and "Sunny" look fine, but Sunny gives more saturation to the light. The focus is not sharp enough on both pictures. It was quite windy and boats were slightly moving on the water, which became obvious with 3 seconds of shutter speed.

12mm; f/18; 6 sec; white balance - sunny; ISO 400

In this case it was not completely dark outside, but to take this picture I had to set ISO to 400 and shutter speed to 6 seconds. As there was no wind, the sharpness is also fine.

The first thing  learned from this exercise is that outdoors pictures look most natural and colours temperature is warmer with white balance set to Sunny. There are many different opportunities for outdoors photography at night - from city streets to harbors and single buildings with interesting lighting. I will definitely explore more of them in the future.