Holiday lights

Good morning and Happy Thanksgiving.

The holidays are approaching and I would like to try photographing the Christmas decorations in town and on some homes.
A lot  of information is providede on the internet and in youtube videos. There is a wide range of advice from avoiding high ISO to using high ISO etc..
I was wondering if I could get a few tips on settings that have been successful for people on NPN.

Best Regards:

Brian Murphy
 

Brian, as you've already seen, there are many different approaches to shooting holiday lights.  Much of that depends on what you're trying to capture.  Do you want just lights, do you want some details in the darker areas, how much dof, etc.  Here's a "Christmas card" that I put together last year that combines stars (long exposure) and artificial lights (shorter exposure).  Note that some of the artificial lights in town (particularly the street lights) are blown at the settings used while the decorative lights are not.  As you see, I used a moderately high iso, but one that in my camera still gives low noise.  I think that my aperture choice was dof driven, to get the front to back sharpness in 2 exposures.  You should have plenty of time to practice as the holiday lights will be up for a coupe of weeks and I recommend trying lots of different settings.

Mark summed it up well. It is all in what you are trying for. I just looked back at one night's session around town last December. I used everything from ISO 100, 10s, f/11 to capture lots of moving lights in a display to ISO 1600, f/4, 1/25s to capture just the display lights. I tried to capture some stars in one series, and used f/4, ISO 800, 10s; this didn't blow out the display lights to badly and allowed some stars to shine through the city light pollution. Good luck and have fun.