My early attempt at blue hour. It's not as difficult or complex as it's made out to be. You can refer to various blue hour sites to find the exact time for recording the blue hour image in your location. The time slot is usually about 30 minutes in india but varies depending on where you are based. With practice you can get it right in 3 to 4 exposures depending on the brightness.. In the case of the bandra lands end image the exposures were 1 sec to 20 sec maintaining a one stop multiple.The ISO needs to be low to get a long exposure and reduce noise. Set the camera for long exposure low noise. Aparture at f8 or f11. A cable release and a tripod helps steady the camera.. If on a tripod remember to put the IS off as it will mislead the camera by trying to correct shake tha does not exist. Set white balance to auto and shoot raw. Once captured use the raw convertor to adjust brightness to the required level and fine tune with the exposure slider. Stay within 1 f stop -/+ to control noise. Once this is done use the white balance control to move the colour temperature towards 2500-3500 kelvin range and adjust to get a nice uniform blue.some burning may be required near bright light sources in the image. Sharpen and save to 16 bit tiff.


It is possible to get the same effect with higher ISO and hand held using newer low light sensitive cameras such as the fuji x pro1. Tests setting ISO to 6400 allows shutter speeds of 1/20 to 1/60 sec for the bandra image. Better lit subjects will require more modest ISO settings thereby yielding better quality.the Fuji xpro has amazing shadow detail as seen in these night Images which probably is due to the design of the sensor and the way the RGB pixels are laid out which is different from the standard Bayer pattern..However the light trails from the cars will not record at higher shutter speeds. Interestingly I had no trouble auto focussing the xpro 1 in low light. The fuji x pro has so many features that it never fails to amaze me.. On long exposures using B the LCD displays the time so it's easy to control exposure. On T u can set the number of seconds and the camera will do the rest.

This technique works well for landscapes, city scenes and buildings that are well lit.