Coventry: The Whittle Arch at Night

I braved the cold and the darkness tonight and went alone to the city centre in the hopes of capturing a picture of the Whittle Arch, one of Coventry's most famous structure, at night. I've seen before how the area lights up beautifully and I have been planning this for ages.

This morning we've had storms and heavy rain, and by evening the day became extraordinarily clear. Anyway, here are the results:










I've discovered something new from the experiment, which was how to create the "starburst effect" seen in the above series as the star-like emanations from the light sources. One way is to use a starburst filter, but I found that using very small apertures (e.g. F22) could create the effects seen above.

Quite a few people gave me puzzled stares, a teenage couple even approached me and asked for me to take their picture in front of the structure. Mental note: next time bring a friend for night photos, as the experience could be scary!

It was also an opportunity to test my new tripod: a SLIK Pro 330DX:

Overall, I'm moderately happy with the tripod. Features:

1. Relatively cheap
2. Comes with a 3-way pan-and-tilt head
3. The handles are covered with foam for handling comfort, especially during winter (you know, the metal gets cold)
   
4. The legs could be spread quite wide apart for really low heights, e.g. for macro photography.
5. Weighs 1.5kg

It feels relatively solid, and it weighs relatively light and overall, for the price I'm quite happy with it. However, if I had more for the tripod budget I probably would have bought a Manfrotto 190Pro. However, the Manfrotto 190 costs £100, and comes WITHOUT a tripod head.

A good tripod head costs around £200.

Yup, photography is an extremely expensive hobby!

PS
Across the continent back home in Malaysia my brother is actually getting married at the moment, so Congrats(!!) and god bless Muzaffar & Nani. Above all I wish you two happiness and a blissful marriage.

Unfortunately my parents have yet to send me pictures so I'm not sure how the ceremony went but I'll post pictures as soon as they become available.