Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco

This is one of my first shots taken with my new camera, the Canon 5D mark II. I was running around shooting in San Francisco at night without a flash, with the camera set at ISO 6400 and my lens set at f/4.0. I was also exposure bracketing, which sometimes resulted in surprisingly fast exposures. This one was 1/800th of a second!

The Chinese New Year parade crosses a cable car line in San Francisco. The shiny metal in the foreground leading to the parade is the metal cover over the cable moving under the street. The rails the cars run on are the thinner shiny lines leading into the picture.




For this shot to reveal the motion and brighten up the scene I boosted exposure compensation to +2/3 EV and dropped ISO sensitivity from 6400 to 1600, resulting in longer exposure times (1/3 second here).