I am headed to SF in a couple weeks to visit my sister and wanted to take some pictures I found online... I've seen some good pictures of this place and was wondering what settings I might use to shoot it at night.
The second shot I am interested in taking is near the GG Bridge. Here is another example of the shot I am looking for. This person put his settings on this page so it might help. Any other input would be great since I don't know if I'll be shooting in the morning or evening.
I will also be visiting Alcatraz. Any other suggestions on what sort of shots I might be looking for?
Welcome! The first thing that is imperative for shots like those is a tripod. A decent tripod, not the cheapy knock off one that may or may not support a disposable camera. Tripods are annoying because when you are looking, you keep thinking, "it's a ****ing tripod, why would I spend $600" so you get the $50, and it works for a bit, but it drives you nuts and the camera won't stay locked down, so you get the $150, and that one is pretty good, but the head on it sucks, so you go and buy the $200 head. Now that you have a decent head, you start noticing that the legs aren't really doing you any favors, so you start looking again, and now you are back at the $600 pair of legs, and now you think to yourself, "****, I should have just gotten this one to start with."
Now, that is not to say I think you have to go out and get the Gitzo 3 series carbon 6x type tripod and a Really Right Stuff bh-55 ball head out of the gate, but definitely look at a tripods with an eye toward your future needs. You need to get legs that can support the weight that you want to put on them, as well as what you are going to put on them in the future. Do you care that they are heavy (aluminum vs. carbon)? Do they have to fold up small, if they do are you willing to sacrifice the stability to get that small package? Heads are the same deal. Ball heads are the most flexible in terms of being able to exactly manipulate the camera where you want it, but you have to get one that is robust enough that the camera and a heavy lens won't slip when it is tightened down.
Now to the actual shooting. What I would do is put the camera in manual, both these shots are more underexposed that what a camera exposure meter is going to want to give you. The first decision I personally like to make is aperture. Do I want a lot of things in focus (like the GG shot), or do a want certain areas out of focus. If you want more things in focus, you use higher f numbers, if you look at the GG bridge shot it is shot at f/8 with a relatively short lens. If you want some areas out of focus, you would shoot with a smaller f number (like f/2.8). The higher the f number, the less light is going to get into the camera, so higher f number is going to be longer shutter speeds. If you want the water blurred like both of these have, you are going to want the shutter open for several seconds. You can can compromise you aperture slightly to get the shutter speed you want and vice versa. You last variable of how much light it is going to take to get the picture you want is your ISO. Low ISOs (like 100) it is going to take a lot of light to expose. At ISO 200 you need half as much light as you would at ISO 100 (400 would take half the light of 200, and so on), so you shutter speed would be half as long, or you could close your aperture by one full stop. The trade off is noise in the image, the higher the ISO, the more noise you are likely going to introduce into the image. If you have a good tripod, it is good to stick with low ISOs (100, 200 range).
With all that said, go down to where you want to shoot, get there with a good amount of time before the time of day you want to shoot, and start with settings similar to the bridge shot. The great thing about digital is you can then look at the image and see what you get. Start making adjustments to your exposure until you get the image that you want.
