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Digital Urban and Cityscape Photography

City Lights Can Affect Exposure

SUMMARY: Change your digital camera's settings to offset the brightness of city lights.

No matter what time of the day you are taking photos, bright city lights can throw off your camera's metering and exposure readings. To compensate for this, use your digital camera's matrix metering readings to get an average exposure calculation instead of accidentally using spot metering directly on the lights. Also consider manually underexposing your photo 1/2 - 1 f-stop, and you should consider bracketing your photos to get the results you desire.

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