Photographing Vivid Sydney from the Harbour Bridge pylon
Up in the Harbour Bridge's south pylon with a night filter on the lens, letting 8 to 20 seconds of Vivid light build up on each frame. Where I shot from, the settings for every shot, and why long exposures suit Vivid.
The short answer
- Location
- Pylon Lookout, south pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge
- Exposure
- 8 to 20 seconds
- Aperture
- f/5.6 to f/8 (f/3.5 for the Opera House panorama)
- ISO
- 100, one frame at 200
- Filter
- NiSi night filter on every shot
- Support
- Benro Cyanbird tripod for anything over a second
- Focal length
- 24 to 79 mm equivalent
Where to photograph Vivid Sydney from above
I shot from the Pylon Lookout in the south pylon of the Harbour Bridge, with a Sydney photography group. From up there you look straight down over Circular Quay, across the CBD skyline and The Rocks, and along the bridge deck itself. You get the whole of Vivid's harbour-side lighting in one view, and you're above the crowds rather than in them.
Why use long exposures for Vivid Sydney?
Most of these shots are 8 to 20 second exposures, and that's what brings out the light. Over that time, the building lighting and projections build up into rich colour, traffic on the roads becomes clean light trails, and the water in the harbour smooths out.
A long exposure also lets me keep the ISO at 100. On a 1-inch sensor that matters: at the Las Vegas Grand Prix I had to push to ISO 3200 to freeze fast cars, and noise was the camera's one weakness. Buildings don't move, so here I could trade shutter time for a clean file.
Camera settings for every shot
| Shot | Focal length | Aperture | Shutter | ISO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skyline and Circular Quay | 50 mm eq | f/8 | 10 s | 100 |
| Light trails, Cahill Expressway | 24 mm eq | f/8 | 10 s | 200 |
| Circular Quay and The Rocks | 24 mm eq | f/8 | 13 s | 100 |
| Harbour Bridge deck | 52 mm eq | f/5.6 | 20 s | 100 |
| Opera House panorama | 79 mm eq | f/3.5 | 8 s | 100 |
The wide skyline shots are at f/8, which keeps everything sharp from the foreground to the towers. The frames were shot between about 6:50 pm and 8:30 pm.
Do you need a tripod for Vivid long exposures?
Yes. Anything longer than a second goes on a tripod, and every shot in this post was 8 seconds or more. Mine is a Benro Cyanbird, a compact carbon fibre travel tripod. It folds down to about 46 cm and weighs around a kilo, which makes it easy to carry up to a spot like the pylon lookout, and it holds the RX10 IV dead still for a 20 second exposure. It's also a genuinely good-looking piece of kit in its ocean blue finish.
Here it is at Vivid Sydney 2026, set up above Circular Quay with the NiSi filter on the lens.
What does a night filter do?
Every shot here was taken with a NiSi night filter. Night filters are designed to cut the orange-yellow cast that street and building lighting throws across a city at night, so colours come out cleaner and the sky stays closer to its natural tone. After Las Vegas, it was the one thing I said I'd use next time.
The Opera House from the pylon
The Opera House sits across Circular Quay from the bridge, so this one is zoomed to 79 mm equivalent, at f/3.5 for 8 seconds.
See the full Serenity gallery