Shooting Challenge: 30 Gorgeous Low-Light Shots…Vote For Your Favourite!

It’s Gizmodo Australia Shooting Challenge prize time! There are some amazing photos in this bunch of Low Light entries, and we’ve selected the first of two finalists to go head to head in the final round! Check out these entries!

Prizes

Back once again with a brand new prize: this time you’re playing for the awesome Nokia Lumia 1020: the best Lumia yet.

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is a mobile photographer’s dream.

The 1020 packs a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 4G capabilities and a 4.5-inch 1280×768 screen with 332 ppi. It’s a gorgeous device, but the real party piece comes when you turn the phone around.

There, you’ll find a 41-megapixel PureView camera: technology we thought could only belong in a lab, let alone on a phone you can slip easily into your pocket. The camera is the 1020′s main event, and boy is it quite a trick.

We’re giving away the Lumia 1020 handset, valued at $899, as well as the incredible Camera Grip Pro attachment, valued at $89.95, which not only turns the Lumia 1020 into a convenient everyday shooter, but also includes a spare battery to charge you up on a long day snapping.

It’s exciting to be able to give one Nokia Lumia 1020 away to the Shooting Challenge faithful over the next three weeks (one round per week). The prize pack you’re playing for is valued in total at $988.95.


Who Won The First Round?

Ifanada Koentjoro

Took this photo during my lunch break; a bright sunny day with some clouds at Martin Place, Sydney. Old buildings somehow give me a sense of ageless. I used my Lumia 920, edited straight from the phone using Nokia Creative Studio. All settings auto except the aperture.

Congratulations! You’re in the final! You’ll be going up against the next two finalists for the coveted Nokia Lumia 1020!

Check out this week’s Low Light entries and help put someone through to the next round!

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Johnhenry Schmidt

just walking home from picking up a new lens and next thing I know, bam!!

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Luke Venables

I took this picture with my Lumia 920. I used a 4s exposure, ISO of 800 & no flash. The amazing thing is that this scene had almost zero light when you looked at it on the screen. When I was growing up my Mum & Dad always grew fruit trees. This is the beginnings of a lemon from the first harvest of a miniature lemon tree that I keep on my porch. I took this picture to send home to my Mum to show how how clever I am.

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Arjun

Canberra – Floriade NightFest

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Kristine Dudgeon

I am a geologist working fly-in fly-out on a mine site in outback WA. So, logically, I have a bunch of rocks sitting around in my room. When the power goes out and we are forced to use torches, I love the way the torchlight brings out the hidden textures in my calcite chunks. Thus, while everyone else was at the bar, I decided to see how well my phone camera would go capturing the effect in a completely dark room, with a maglite mini as the only light. Taken on a Samsung galaxy S3. Specified low-light shooting mode and macro focus, all other settings left on auto. I sharpened the picture a bit afterwards.

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Vaibhav Singhal

I was having breakfast in Melbourne City and luckily I was with my camera with me.
We can clearly see the electricity shooting along in the vintage-style bulbs.

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Stuart

Pretty simple shot, combo long exposure with LED ice cubes and a flash to catch the splash, enjoy.

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Cole Barnett

Brisbane’s Riverfire was held this weekend and we had a superb spot to see the fireworks. The show had ended and I decided to take a long exposure of the city, halfway through they let off one final firework that must have been left over. The result was beautiful.
It has to be my favourite shot from the night.

Artist: COLE
Camera: Pentax K-30
Lens: smc PENTAX-DA 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 ED AL[IF] DC WR
Shot at 18 mm
Exposure: Auto exposure, Shutter priority AE, 10 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100
Flash: Off, Did not fire
Date: September 28, 2013 7:26:28PM
File: 2,912 x 4,928 JPEG (14.4 megapixels)
1,039,707 bytes (0.99 megabytes) Image compression: 98%

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Stuart Buck

Matsumoto Castle, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.
During my travels through Japan this has become one of my favorites. Because of it’s long history, and it’s location nestled in a valley surrounded by the beautiful Japanese alps.
This castle was built in 1504 and famous for being the oldest (non-rebuilt) castle in Japan, thus becoming one of the ‘National treasures of Japan’.
Shot using Canon EOS 500D, 18-55mm lens, aperture: f/3.5, 1/10 second exposure, ISO1600. Slightly adjusted using Aperture software to optimize building definition and brightness. Shot on 25/09/2013.

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Jarred Walker

Whilst driving along a dark country road over the weekend, I came across this burnt out passenger bus on the side of the road. After travelling over a kilometre past it, I simply had to turn back and get a couple shots of this.

This was shot on my Nikon D3100 with stock 18-55mm lens at f3.6 for 30secs, ISO400.

Was a VERY eerie feeling being 50km from the nearest town, pitch black, resting the body on the roof of my car, hitting the shutter button, pointing the lens straight into darkness and getting this result.

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Jason Le

Photo was taken with a D7100 whilst at Floriade NightFest in Canberra. Took my camera along to see the quality in low light environments and took some pretty nice photos.
This particular photo was taken using a 35mm fixed lens at f/2.8 with an exposure time of 1/30 and an ISO of 1250.
I wanted to capture the huge bed of flowers and accentuate them using bokeh.

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Sandro Renda

Exciting jet fighters, helicopters and attack choppers flew through Brisbane’s river to end whats been a great Brisbane Festival. Then came the fireworks which ignited River-fire all along the river. Amazing displays of fireworks and lasers for 30 minutes. Here’s my favorite moment, hope you enjoy:
Sony a77 – 16-50mm SSM 2.8 (16mm) – 1/10sec – f/4 – ISO640

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Lachy Corrie

For this shot, I used a 600D (my first DSLR) with the kit 55-250 lens. I had it on a 1/30s exposure at F/5 with an ISO of 100. The Focal length was at around 70mm (APS-C), and was shot handheld about 2m away from the fireplace. The story behind this image is somewhat coincidental. The glass that you see in the fireplace is, or used to be that of a light bulb I was using to attempt some light-painting for this very competition. was getting into so much fun swinging the light around, I failed to realise its proximity to the ground. I figured why not see how it looks in the fireplace, and hence, this image was conceived.

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Jatin Thakur

Dedicated towards learning.

Shot with a Canon 60D at F5.6, 1/200 and ISO400.

Added a bit of color correction in Post.

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Alex Tam

Went down to see Brisbane Riverfire for the first time on the weekend. Only turned up 1 hour before it starts, so I didn’t have the best viewing angle.

Took the photo using a long shutter speed, small aperture size, tripod and most importantly an IR remote to stamp out all possible camera shakes.

Camera: Nikon D600
Lens: NIkon 50mm f/1.4g
Shutter Speed: 2.1 seconds
ISO 200

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Blas

I shot this photo while staying at the coast. I shot the bridge from different angles, and decided to submit this one because you can see the the reflection on the water and the grain of the wood.
Shot using Sony DSC-HX300V

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William Solis

I took this after my shift at Warringah Mall, it was late night shopping and this was in front of Target looking up.

I thought the contrast of the night sky and the well lit interior made an interesting photo and I went full photographer mode capturing the scene the same time at different angles.

I just didn’t like the colours and I felt that black and white really brought out the difference that I saw.

I used auto in nokia pro cam and the golden ratio grid.

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James Cooper

Information:
For this photo, I simply followed a pattern over and over until I saw shapes, I just stood on my balcony, pointed the camera at the police cars, ambulances and fire trucks that are at what appears to be an accident of some sort, then moved the camera in a motion, as I was just holding without a tripod. I took multiple shots, until I saw the visible defined shapes in this photo.
Camera: Nikon 1 J1
Lens: Nikon 1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6
F Stop: 3.6
ISO: 800
Exposure Time: 1.3 Seconds

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Michael Chou

This shot is from my Nikon V1 with a new 18.5mm prime lens that I just bought the day before as a present to myself for getting a new job! I had read up a lot about primes and wanted to know first hand if they lived up to all the hype. This photo was taken at a restaurant along Cockle Bay Wharf where I was having a celebratory dinner while testing out the capabilities of this lens. It created this beautiful background blur without any post-processing and coupled it with the crisp, sharp foreground. Needless to say I am very happy with this lens and it’s definitely a keeper!

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Mohammed Ali Baddah

Last Friday night I made a trip to the Blue Mountains as there was no moon (my favourite time of the month) and the forecast was for clear 🙂 It proved to be a spectacular night with not a single cloud in the sky appearing and viewing a series of spectacular meteorites throughout the entire night. Clear skies under the heavens + warm cup of tea = total bliss 🙂

This image of my favourite region in the milkyway, the constellation Sagittarius is a single sub of a series I took to stack later on (to increase signal-to-noise ratio). I used an Astrotrac tracking mount to eliminate any trailing especially at this focal length. You can clearly see the Triffid Nebula (M20) and the Lagoon Nebula (M8) to the right of the image.

Canon 600D mounted on a Astrotrac
Canon 50mm f1.8 ‘nifty-fifty’ at f2.8
ISO1600
30 sec

Processed in PS using Levels, Curves, and slight boost in Saturation.

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Jamie Phommalysack

Well it’s another night sky shot isn’t it? Just thought it’d paint a beautiful scene so there you go. It mirrors what the place would look like during the day but feels quite different standing there in your PJs in the cold silence with the tripod.

Shot with a NEX-5R, 30 seconds, f/3.5, ISO400, 16mm

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Jan Hohmann

Exposure was 3 seconds
ISO1600
F5.6

This is a nice view of the Melbourne CBD from inside a building overlooking Fawkner Park and you can see the Shrine and the Eureka tower. It was a cloudy night which didn’t help with the light pollution, so I increased the sharpness and reduced the noise after taking the picture.

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Justin Cooper

I have wanted to take a photo like this for years, and finally it happened last weekend. Up on holidays in around Lake Eildon in Vic, I noticed there was no moon and I could see the Milky Way. Away from the city lights it looked great, but it’s amazing how much more the camera sees. Got my OMD E-M5 out and started snapping. 20 second exposure, 12-50 lens set at f3.5, ISO 2000, and a tripod! Can’t wait to try this again in another location.

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Ben Appleton

I usually always take my DSLR and tripod to Floriade Nightfest, however this year i decided to go with a group of friends so i just took my small Sony RX100 point and shoot. I didnt take many photos, but I was really happy with this photo.
I really like using the RX100 because it has an aperture of f1.8 and is my favourite point and shoot for low light photography.
I didnt have a tripod with me so the photo was taken whilst hand holding the camera. I used a 1/8th of a second exposure and an ISO of 3200.
It was nice to be able to hang out with a bunch of friends that i dont often get to see but still get to take a few photos. If I had a new Nokia Lumia 1020, I wouldnt need to carry a separate camera to my phone!

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Jonathon Lau

This is an experiment in creating holograms using slow shutter photography. In a 3D program I created a 5 second animated cross section of a bird. This animated cross section was then played back on a tablet, whilst being moved to redraw the bird in light.

Olympus Em-5
Panasonic 14mm f/9 lens.
Shutter 5sec
ISO 200

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Chris Rockstroh

“Workaholic”
Shot with a D7100, 11-16mm Tokina, tripod , a single light, a patient and very still friend, and access to a plastics/manufacturing plant at 11pm. Settings for every shot were ISO 200, f/4 and 4 seconds. It was pitch black in the plant.

I originally wanted to do a star shot but I felt it was a bit cliched, so I got access to a plastic plant and did some grungy lighting with the machines. It’s a multiple image composite, I had to paint separate parts of the frame with a light (about 40 different frames) and combine them in post. My friend managed to stay still for the portrait part.

The image took 4 hours from start to finish, including Photoshop crashing while saving 3 times. The final PSD file was 3.5GB.

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Vlad Koltounov

At the Royal Melbourne Show just before closing. I’m walking out the gate and snap this with my Lumia 920. No effects were applied.

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Way Liew

The hour of blackout. There was a blackout last night and some of the only things that worked in my entire home is shown in this picture. My home was powered by candles that night and when my phone ran out of battery all was lost.

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Leo Atap

Camera: Lumia 925
Settings: Auto
ISO: 640

Wandering around the neighbourhood at night found this school’s wall with colourful lights.

#nightshotswithlumia925

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Maureen Atap

Camera: Lumia925
Settings: Auto
ISO: 400

Blackout? No, Just having candlelit dinner. #romantic

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Jarrad Evans

Lumia 920, Nokia Pro Cam app, 1.6sec exposure.
I took this photo late Friday evening in Brisbane’s Chinatown mall. I’ve been experimenting with the new Nokia Pro Cam app and am really enjoying the added features. I really wanted a long exposure to get a mist-like effect on the waterfall but there was too much light in the mall at the time. 1.6 seconds was the longest I could go without blowing out the picture even more.

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