[brightseal]

There's at least a few elaborately Christmas themed decorated houses near and not too far from me. K3 body, thinking about ultra wides i.e. DA 10-17, Vivitar S1 19-35mm , Rokinon 14mm/2.8 , F 17-28mm.

Taking photos at night. Any advice? Thanks

[Sterby]

I envy you, we don't have that Christmas decoration thing here. The main street had some nice Vienna style light decorations years ago but they stopped and put out ugly chinese blue LEDs and less than quarter of what decorations were before. Not very photogenic, empty and cold like they want to scare away the Christmas spirit. Sadness...

Back to your question, use a tripod, see how starbursts add to the photo and adjust aperture (closed down aperture gives the bigger starbursts)
I would start with straight forward angle on the houses, street if it is well lit. Ultra wides are good, but bring the 35 Limited too, you might never know.

[brightseal]

street if it is well lit

Streets are not well lit at all

[Canada_Rockies]

My favorite chase the lights kit is the camera with DA 12-24, tripod, cable release. Somewhere I have the exposure settings I use, but it's easy enough to take a few and chimp until they look right.

[Alex645]

If quality is in your budget:
Pentax HD Pentax DA 15mm f/4 ED AL Limited Lens
or my second choice:
Pentax Zoom Fisheye to Super Wide-Angle SMCP-DA 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 ED (IF)

Iʻve regretted all the inexpensive glass Iʻve wasted money on, especially at the wide and tele ends.

[ramseybuckeye]

The lens won't matter as much as the technique as long as you can get everything you want in the field of view. Although an ultrawide may allow for some dramatic closeups. Tripod and remote are essential, shoot at ISO 100 in manual, unless there are moving things like people in a shot then you may have to bump it up. Experiment, you may want to shorten exposure times to keep from overexposing, some of those little lights are very bright, but everything else is dark. Mostly have fun.

[Kevin B123]

I did some of this last year so here are few of my pointers.
Pick a time when there is less foot fall if possible as you ought to be on a tripod taking long exposures and you might be in the way otherwise. A remote is a good idea here.
There will be more light bouncing around if has been raining recently, but take what you get I suppose.
On long exposures, cover the OVF with your hand or the street lighting behind you might spoil a shot or two.
I just started doing PP on a more capable computer and found these below were too dark and bumped the exposure up 1ev, you could do that in camera at the start if the scene is predominately dark.
I used the SMC DA21 mm which I found wide enough for these scenes, even then I have to compose carefully to remove unwanted objects, but FL is scene dependent and a good zoom might serve you better.
If you have a lens that will make nice starbursts, this is it's party time.
Happy hunting.

Apologies, I saved the first two in portrait, but they came in as landscape and I don't know why yet! I have now removed them

Attached Images

View Picture EXIF

File Date

 

---

Last edited by Kevin B123; 12-12-2016 at 12:20 AM. Reason: Removed images in wrong orientation

[brightseal]

I gave it a shot, felt somewhat creepy outside people's homes taking pictures. I had a hard time achieving sharpness...