Night Over Los Angeles

Night Over Los Angeles, originally uploaded by Gamut's Edge.

This photo was taken shortly after sunset. We were flying at 36,000 feet, and were about 20 miles off the coast southwest of Los Angeles. If you look at the left side of the frame you can see coastal fog creeping into the city.

Normally I shoot nighttime aerials at ISO 3200, f/2.8, and 1/30th sec. I also normally shoot wide angle, >35 mm, at night to reduce blur from camera shake. We were pretty far from the city when I took this picture so I had to zoom in to 70mm. I tried using a faster shutter speed to reduce camera shake blur. What do you know -- it worked! The lights came out a little darker than normal, but they were still pretty sharp, and there was actually less noise in the dark areas than I normally get with a night aerial. I was able to pull the lights up to a normal level in photoshop and I did my usually trick of sending everything dark to complete black to reduce the noise.

Let me know what you think.