I found myself by the Apollo bridge today, and while wanting to take some sunset shots in the area, the sunset just wasn’t so interesting. So I decided to go under the bridge. I just really like that spot :)
While taking this photos, I thought about the aperture. I tend to use a quite low one when shooting night cityscapes. It’s mostly a custom from before I used magic lantern, as there the longest shot had to be under 30 seconds, and partially lack of patience, as I hate to wait few minutes for a single shot. But here I bumped up the aperture to F11 and decided to wait for how long it takes. And I really like the result, the overall sharpness, and the beautiful softness of the water. Looks like I will use a smaller aperture more often :)
Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 16mm, Aperture: 11, Middle exposure time: 49s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.135918, 17.128131
Is the huge starburst straight out of the camera or photoshopped?
Straight out of the camera. I don’t like to change those.
The higher you chose your aperture, the more dominantly these starbursts appear.
I usually do like them but in this particular case it’s a bit too big imho since it draws a lot of attention away from all the detail in the bridge. I for my part would have tried to either (a) blend in a photo with a smaller aperture where it’s less pronounced or (b) try to reduce it only using photoshop. But don’t get me wrong — it’s a great photo, this way or the other and I definitely won’t presume to tell you how you should edit it! ;-)
The starburst is actually my favorite part of the photo :). That’s why I left it as it was. I have various shots of the bridge, where it’s not so dominant, so it makes this one a little more different.
Where did you make your focus? I’m curious about it :)
Can’t be 100% sure, but here I always focus around the first bridge support, so around 1/3 into the scene.