How to Click Night Photographs on my Nikon D90?

I recently brought a Nikon D90 and am not too familiar with the Camera myself. But am learning different settings and trying different stunts. I would love to know how to click Photographs at night. What settings is best suited for night photographs with lots of lights and lit up Building? Appreciate your detailed feedback and valuable answers.

First of all, you will need a tripod, as exposure times will be long. Put your camera in the manual mode, in order to control both exposure and aperture. Now follow these steps:

1) Set the ISO at 200 to minimize noise.
2) Set the aperture to F8 (almost every lens is at its sharpest here).
3) Start with an exposure time of +/- 5 seconds. Add 5 seconds if the result looks too dark. How long the actual exposure time needs to be, is a matter of experimenting. Lighting conditions differ from location to location and from shot to shot. Trial and error here!

You will notice that the camera will be busy even after the shutter closes. This is because the camera will take a 'dark frame' shot immediately afterwards. This will take exactly as much same time as the original exposure (e.g.a 5-second exposure will take 10 seconds to complete). This is to cancel out hot pixels, which will occur during long exposures.

Shutter priority with slower shutter speed depending on your lens. I'm going to take a guess and say you have a 18-55 kit lens so at best you would have a f3.5 meaning you need to let it more light. If you need a good starter lens get a 50mm f1.8 Very good lens that lets a good amount of light in making it excellent for low light photography and its only $100 making it every beginning photographer's favorite lens.

First, successful night photography requires a tripod.

Second, you don't just "click" night pictures.

I use and recommend this site for low-light exposure calculations:

http://www.calculator.org/...osure.aspx I used the Scene 'Distant view of city skyline or floodlit buildings' and ISO 200 for these pictures of the Louisville, Kentucky skyline as seen from the Indiana shore across the Ohio River:

100mm @ f11, exposure of 30 seconds.

200mm @ f11, exposure of 30 seconds.

Since your camera has a maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds you can use the camera's self-timer to release the shutter. Turn the VR on the lens to OFF when using your camera on a tripod. Turn the AF on the lens to OFF as well since the camera will likely have difficulty focusing in such low light - you'll have to manually focus.

1) Always shoot at your camera's highest resolution in NEF (RAW) + JPEG
2) Always use a low ISO. If I had used ISO 100 and f8 my exposure for the referenced pictures would have still been 30 seconds. At ISO 100 and f11 my exposure would have been for 60 seconds.

If you're unsure as to what shooting in NEF (RAW) + JPEG means these should help:

http://www.shutterbug.net/book_reviews/0210raw101/index.html

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

http://www.shutterbug.net/equipmentreviews/software_computers/0308rawprocess/index.html

This site will help you learn more about your D90:

http://www.nikondigitutor.com/eng/d90/index.shtml

These sites will teach you about photography:

http://www.digital-photography-school.com

http://www.kamerasimulator.se/eng/?page_id=2

http://www.illustratedphotography.com/photography-tips/basic