Cityscape photography is about photographing the cities or towns, the subject can be buildings, monuments, streets, traffics and people. During daytime, smartphones perform great because light is sufficient. When it comes to night time, it becomes challenging due to low light condition and artificial light that creates high contrast scenes. However, modern smartphones have high dynamic range and RAW format support that lead to great cityscape photos.
Requirements
1. Tripod – to keep phone steady during long exposure. Dolica AX620B100 62-Inch Proline Tripod and Ball Head is the type of tripod that I am using. It is solid enough for a smartphone.
2. Intervalometer – for shooting citylapse (city timelapse). There are no intervalometer devices for phones currently, but there is an Intervalometer app for Android phones and it works on any camera apps.
Details on using this app : Intervalometer for Android
3. ND filter – for longer exposure/light trails effect. When the street light is too bright even ISO 100 and 1 second overexposes the images, ND filter is useful to reduce the amount of light. I use 37mm variable ND filter for smartphones to adjust the exposure for desired shutter speed. This is the type of ND filter that I am using:
Setting
ISO is always set to 100 for better image quality and long exposure shots. Since the aperture is fixed, exposure is controlled by shutter speed only. To create light trails effect from the vehicles, shutter speed can be set to a few seconds (2 to 6 seconds). ND filter may be needed when longer exposure is needed to create light trails effect.
Post-processing
Post-processing of the RAW files can be done on Lightroom Mobile or Snapseed. (*All photos are taken on OnePlus 3)
Timelapse
For time-lapse shooting, Intervalometer app is used to automate photo taking process. Post-processing of each frame and video rendering were done in Adobe Lightroom and LRTimelapse software on PC.
*NEW: Time-lapse can now be rendered with TimeLab Android app to post-process the image frames into a time-lapse video, star trails stacking and even star trails time-lapse. Click HERE to learn more on the app.
Setting: ISO 100, 2 seconds
Long exposure timelapse with ND filter
Setting: ISO 100, 6 seconds, interval of 8 seconds