Walking home from work, it’s now totally dark by the time I leave work, so I decided it was time to try out a couple of test shots with the new camera to see what it can do at night – it has a lot to prove as it’s smaller, less powerful predecessor got me some great night shots over the last few years, more often than not improvised on the way somewhere, so I didn’t have the tripod with me. These test ones were, like the old camera ones, improvised, setting the right mode and timer then resting the camera on a wall or ledge or railing, activating the timer and letting it go. The first couple of shots weren’t very good, very speckly, lots of ‘noise’, nowhere near as good as the old Fuji E900 I had for years. Then I realised it was only in the first part of its night mode and if I clicked the onscreen menu there were more advanced ones, so set one up, left it there with the shutter open for a bit and it seemed to work – this was taken with the camera sitting on a railing a the top of Granny Black’s Steps looking over the Grassmarket and Westport to Edinburgh College of Art, with the large windows all blazing:

I turned the camera around and down into the Grassmarket, over to the far side where there are more stairs (stairs up and down being a major feature of living in a city built on seven steep hills!) which lead up from there towards Lauriston, with the old Salvation Army homeless hostel on the right of the steps, now a wee designer hotel. Not the best framed shots – as I had to go with what angles I could get from the camera sitting on a flat surface rather than mounted on the good tripod it limits options a bit – but I’m still reasonably happy with these considering they were just test shots, sure I will do better night shots with the new camera in the time to come.