Stortford by Night – After Brassai!

I had to go into our local town last night to drop off my wife at a function. Normally I wouldn’t go into town on a Saturday night as it’s absolutely heaving with revellers and all the pubs are jam packed, so no chance of a quiet drink.

I had been meaning for some time to try out my little Sony RX100 camera doing some night time shots as I find it’s Rich Monotone setting very good during the day time.

One of my favourite classic film photographers is the Hungarian-French photographer Brassai. In the 1930s he travelled through Paris at night taking some eerie night time shots of the city. His book ‘Paris by Night’ is one of my favourites.

So I thought I’d try to emulate Brassai in Bishops Stortford.

I set the ISO to 2000 to start with and the aperture at f5.6.

I set the exposure for minus 1 stop as I wanted to capture the dark blacks of Brassai’s film shots.

The Rich Monotone setting on the Sony captures very good tonal ranges but it does ghost people walking at these relatively slow shutter speeds.