For now I don´t have a tripod, :/.. and yeah, i allready cleaned it .

no offense but shooting night photos handheld with a Nikon D40 is not really a good idea
You would need a much better camera if you want to taking night or low light photos without a tripod

shooting night photos with exposure time of xx seconds is not a good idea with any camera really ^^

and maybe he put his camera on a table, or other rest

Shooting anything with a shutter below 1/60th is not adviseable.

most of the night photos I took was handheld and some of them turned out pretty good but of course they would have got even better if I used a tripod.
A combination of wide aperture, image stabilizer, high ISO and in-camera noise reduction is a must if you want to take decent handheld night photos



with IS turned on I have taken some sharp images with shutter speed as slow as 1/10 second

This post was edited by Futurama on Dec 29 2008 04:00pm

do you think people get great shots at night by using a 1/60 shutter speed?

id love to see a good shot at night with a 1/60th shutter. My camera has to expose its sensor for 2"-bulb for it to take photos in low light ^^

This post was edited by doyleo on Dec 29 2008 04:05pm

No, but even during the day, anything below 1/60th needs a tripod.

yeah but you said this:






And i think futurama is right here i can manage 1/10 with an IS lens

Sure, you might think that, but when it comes to printing a large format print, you can see slight camera shake, nothing you'd notice when looking at your screen.

I don't see where you're getting confused with what I've said.

This post was edited by Veilside on Dec 29 2008 04:19pm

some comparison graphs from Dpreview:

IS on


IS off