I’ve been out on Primrose Hill a couple of times recently trying to get a nighttime vista of London. It’s not as easy as I had imagined.

Last week I took a lightweight tripod and a good deal of patience, and really enjoyed the process of trying things out; changing vantage points, and aperture and speed, trying all the while to keep ISO low and the noise to a minimum.  When I got home I was very disappointed to find that my quite expensive Manfrotto tripod had been a bit of a letdown; there’d been a breeze on top of the hill, and the vast majority of the exposures suffered from camera shake.

I went back again yesterday – with a sturdier tripod – and confined myself to my favourite view.  The results were much better, though the high dynamic range means that I really ought to go back again and bracket the shots to composite in Photoshop…