"Nighthouse"
My intervalometer (which I ordered to help with the upcoming Gizmodo timelapse challenge) arrived and I realized that I could use it to do longer exposures than the 60 second maximum built into my camera. I was pretty excited to use it for this challenge so a couple friends and I went out to some of the sea-cliffs in Santa Cruz to do some long exposure shots. I got a lot of good results but this one is the one I thought worked best for the night to day challenge. I found 60 seconds was actually a pretty good exposure time and didn't end up using the intervalometer that much (although I did use it to shoot some timelapse stuff.) This shot was one of the last ones of the evening, at Lighthouse Field State Beach, a little after 12:30 am. Because I was shooting with a micro 4/3rds mirrorless camera, I had a hard time composing and focusing my shots in such low light (having to look at a [usually quite excellent] electronic viewfinder instead of an optical one), and often found myself shooting wide-open ultra-high ISO shots, or shots with the flash, and composing by trial and error. This wasn't so much an issue when I was using some of my fast lenses, but the lens I took this photo with has a maximum aperture of f/4.0 and was really pretty blind in this light. I used a flashlight on my subjects to help get focus. The full moon was really amazing and a lot of our came out looking really excellent. This one didn't really get a huge advantage from the moon, as I was battling the conflicting color temperatures from the moon, the warm street light, and the lighthouse light and floodlights (on the side of the lighthouse) that were somewhere in between.
Camera: Panasonic Lumix GH2 (micro 4/3)
Lens: Lumix G Vario 14-140mm f/4.0-5.6
Focal Length: 17mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure time: 60 seconds
ISO: 160
Post: Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Apple Aperture 3
Sorry about awful grammar, flow, and style in my description...I'm pretty tired right now :)
-Ben Bunch
