San Diego at Night 2

Beautiful!

how do you know that 30min would be the correct exposure for something like this? I would of never thought to hold a shutter for that long

My light meter told me it was a 15 min exposure and I knew I needed to compensate for reciprocity, so I doubled the exposure. 30 min. Generally I have found that in an urban setting you can shoot anywhere around f32 for 30 min in a well lit area and f22 or f16 for 15 min in sort of darker spots of the city. Bracket and you will get some cool stuff.