Xinyi at night (gallery)

2024-03-09

I took these photographs last night, but didn't have the energy to pick my favourites after looking through the ones of the sunset I also took yesterday. There are many of these I like a lot, but the one that struck me the most is the first. I was walking back to my hotel after eating an excellent seaweed noodle soup from Like Tofu, and saw Taipei 101 lit up in the distance, and just had to take a photo. I pulled my camera out, and without changing any settings, took a quick photo. Or, I thought it would be quick. For some reason (thoughtlessness) I expected a quick photograph. Of course, I'd left my camera at ISO 200, and it was very dark out, so the camera does what it should do in aperture mode, and cranked the shutter speed way down... to four seconds. When I heard the shutter open and only close after four seconds, I thought for sure the picture was toast! I checked it right away, and didn't like the way the exposure looked on the camera's screen anyway (and it is a bit too bright for my taste of a night photograph) and noticed my ISO was down so low. I set it to auto, but the camera put itself at 6400, and I didn't care for that, so I manually set it to 4000 and took the rest of the photos there. I liked that setting a lot, it gave me heaps of leeway to change aperture as I wanted for individual shots, and the IBIS did the rest.

But when I got home and pulled the photos off my camera, I was stunned at how sharp the first photograph is, at four seconds of handheld exposure! There was some wind, so you can see that the tree branches in the top centre of the photograph blurred a bit (which looks nice anyway), but the buildings are somehow tack sharp. Sharper, even, than I sometimes get in daytime photographs. Go figure how that works! I'll need to trust the IBIS a bit more at long shutter speeds and such low light. I knew the IBIS was good, and I've never had issues with movement, but I try to avoid shooting at lower than 1/6 if I can avoid it, and mostly write off anything longer than that as "probably not going to turn out". But hey, I really should be taking a closer look at my assumptions about this camera's abilities. Even though I love it, and wouldn't trade it for any camera (except, I suppose, it's younger sibling, which is nearly identical aside from some minor-to-me features) I was still underestimating it!

On to the photos.