Standing on the corner of 2nd and San Antonio, I marvel at the big city look you can get in parts of downtown Austin. This is no longer a sleepy college town.

I’m still shooting the Leica D-Lux 8 during the test mode in early January. However, by this time, I knew this compact camera could do what I was hoping: capture urban landscapes at night at a reasonably high quality. Shooting at 1/8-second, I kept this picture at the base ISO 200.

I shot to preserve the highlights, which means I underexposed this photo. I considerably lifted the shadows in post-processing, something I initially feared because of increased noise, but it looks good here. I feel more confident shooting this way, especially since I now have a copy of Topaz Photo AI, one of the best noise-reduction programs. The software has extended the shooting envelope of the D-Lux 8, though I didn’t do any additional noise reduction in this photograph.

Blog readers, you’ll love my free monthly photography magazine. Signup for the free magazine to get articles and topics not discussed on the blog.