Yeah I understand. That's why I asked -- typically manually focusing in the digital viewfinder (the screen) leads to better sharpness than the autofocus on the optical viewfinder, which has difficulties in low light. I shot this picture with manual focus at night (no HDR):
(Attachment Link)
It's difficult when you want to capture motion as well. There is also this technique of "focus stacking", which allows you to take photos at multiple apertures or focus points and then stitch them together in photoshop, so that you can have the whole scene sharp. It's really cool.
oh yeah I've heard about that. what settings did you use to take that pic btw? whenever I try take pictures of light sources like streetlights directly it always end up being very glare-y and ruins the image
A bit late in, was busy and the photo was buried somewhere. Anyway:
ISO 250, 50mm f/1.4 (prime lens, manual focus), f/8.0, 4 sec shutter time.
Used digital viewfinder (the lcd screen) to focus, used a remote shutter release, and let the mirror fall before the picture was taken.
In post editing I mostly boosted clarity and shadows a bit and fiddled a little bit with the colors to make it look more HDR-like, but it's not HDR.
