Night-time snapping

Bruce Robbins, an UK based photographer and a Pentax and Nikon user, is the author of a few excellent photography-related blogs. His "Pentax Photography" blog has actually been an inspiration for this one. But what I want to mention is his work with low-light, using a Nikon D700 - a camera with a full frame sensor. Bruce has a special interest on night-time photography and has been showing some of the results on his "D700 Snapper" blog. He sometimes goes to the limit of really low available light, hand holding the camera at ISO 6400, apertures around f2 and not too low shutter speeds. The outcomes of his night strolls are quite interesting. Click here to see one of my favorites.

The kind of performance that some DSLRs deliver nowadays, preserving resolution and keeping noise controlled at very high ISO, is actually generating new approaches to photography.

Knowing the K10D's limitations at high ISO, I haven't been much motivated to try night-time street photography. The closest I have done was taking a few shots recently at a Christmas fair. Nothing too audacious, just a "miserable" ISO 400, since the lamps on each stand were reasonably intense. I didn't correct the yellowish tungsten tint as I feel it gives a pleasant warmth to the images.

Pentax K10D + Zeiss Planar 50/1.4

The fact is that I'm now curious about trying the K10D in more demanding low-light conditions. Clearly, that's not the camera's area of excellence, but I wonder what I can do. The results should not be as impressive as Bruce's work, but hey, his camera costs almost 3 times more than mine did! (that and him being a better photographer than me...)