How to shoot night shots on Nikon D5000?

I was having a very hard time shooting the night skyline of Honolulu tonight along with the fireworks that went off. Any setting suggestions?

For night shots, don't use the flash, use iso 400 or 800, use a very low speed, like 3 or 4 seconds or more and use a tripod. I do some night pictures like that and they are very well done. Hope that helps!

Page 86 of your manual makes one suggestion. Essentially shoot in manual mode, set a small aperture such as f/25, use either Bulb or Time to keep the shutter open for the duration of the fireworks you want to shoot. Obviously you need to be on a tripod.

A difficulty with night shots and most zoom lenses is focusing at infinity. The focus setting goes past infinity, many have no distance scale, and for many the distance scale is cosmetic because focus shifts with the focal length zoom. I have a 28mm AF-D f1.8 lens (an older design but still in production) that can be great for night shots because it can dial to infinity. (It will not autofocus with the D5000.)
Anyway, using what you have, first decide what focal length to zoom to, and don't change it, unless you are prepared to refocus. Try to find so bright distant object like street lights that your autofocus can lock onto. Then switch off the auto focus. Compose your shot being very careful not to disturb the focus setting.

There are some tricks to time exposure. One of them is using a tripod. One of them is setting your shutter speed to 3 to 5 seconds depending on how much light you have. Another is keeping your
ISO at 200, and yet another is using your camera's self timer because even the camera motion created by you pushing the shutter release will cause blur.

Here's an example of what I mean.

tripod, self timer, shutter = 10-seconds, aperture f/10.

Fireworks

tripod, self timer, shutter = 5 seconds, aperture f/8

Get the idea?

Http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explore/Photography-Techniques/fvttrrsx/1/The-Fireworks-Show.html