Old Town Cologne at Night
Köln Altstadt bei Nacht

Cologne | Germany

2 Comments on “Old Town Cologne at Night

  1. Hi Achim,

    Amazingly serene light, very soft and balanced light levels. Unable to think how you managed to capture the passenger liner without blur at this low light. Would love to hear your technique if time permits.

    The work I have seen in your gallery are top class.

    Congratulations!

    Ranjith

    • Hello Ranjith,

      thank you for your kind comment.
      There’s actually no rocket science behind this image. I took it at f/11, ISO 100 and 13s exposure time. Focal length was 62mm (35mm equiv.). No filters and what you see is a single exposure.

      I have tried to avoid any blown out highlights in this shot and found 13s exposure time just right for that.
      The secret was to shoot this on a night with full moonlight. The moonlight helps to brighten up the scene slightly. You don’t notice it that much but it helps. In post processing I opened op the shadows quite a lot. Thanks to the huge dynamic range of my Nikon D800E this was possible without introducing much noise to the shadows. After some tonal adjustments the image looked like you see it.

      As the passenger liner was moored at the pier it didn’t move at all. No issue with blur.

      BR
      Achim

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