Skyline as seen from Coit Tower
Coit Tower stands on top of San Francisco’s famous Telegraph Hill, affording you sweeping views of the city with a unique perspective. Telegraph Hill got its name from a signaling device that once stood here. Telegraph Hill is famous for its gardens and it is a popular residential neighborhood next to the North Beach area.
How to get there
Park a couple of blocks away and walk here. You can drive all the way up to Telegraph Hill, but it will take a lot of time waiting for the parking spots to clear up. By that time, you have walked here several times. You can also take the light rail to Embarcadero and Sansome Station (37°48’17.67″N 122°24’11.18″W) and walk from there (about 10 minutes)
GPS position
How to photograph on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill
Coit tower itself is visible throughout the city. You can get excellent shots with a telephoto lens from Lombard Street and Hyde Street and from Levi Strauss Plaza East of Telegraph Hill.
The view from the top of Coit Tower is outstanding. This is where I took the skyline picture at the beginning of this article. Since you cannot bring a tripod, I recommend to go up during a clear day at midday to take advantage of the views in all directions.
Columbus statue and Coit Tower
Since you will be photographing through glass, you should try to avoid reflections. Put your lens against the glass and shield the sides with your hands, sweater, lens hood or have somebody shield the sides for you. If no light can enter in front of the lens, you won’t get any reflections and the glass will not be noticable in your photographs.
Even though you cannot bring a tripod, you could try a Gorillapod and block light with your backpack and body to photograph at night. I used this technique on Toronto’s CN Tower with spectacular results. Unfortunately, there is no good way to set up the Gorillapod, since there is no ledge. Because the Gorillapod fits nicely into your backpack, you will not have any trouble getting it up here. The operators do not screen you. Please comment below if you find a way to set this up.
Use a telephoto lens to isolate buildings and a normal lens for the skyline shot. Make sure your images are not blurry by keeping the basic rule of hand-held photos in mind that says exposure time must be no longer than 1/(focal length * crop factor). This is not true for image-stabilized lenses. Look at your camera manual. If the stabilization claims 2 stops improvement, you can have an exposure time that is 4 times longer and if it claims 3 stops you can go up to 8 times longer.
Use a wide-angle lens to photograph the inside of Coit Tower. Meter off the outside and use manual exposure or use your exposure compensation to avoid overexposing the outside. You can recover the shadows but you cannot recover clipped highlights.
Inside the base of the tower, you can find a large collection of Diego Rivera murals that were commissioned during the Great Depression. Use an external flash, a diffuser, and maybe a reflector that somebody could hold to get good lighting on the murals or avoid flash altogether. In-camera flash will produce ugly highlights on the murals.
Use a wide-angle lens and get really close to the flowers in front of the Christopher Columbus statue for a shot of the statue and the tower. Check your perspective and wide-angle distortions that become very apparent with the straight round tower. Make sure you are satisfied with the relative perspective between the tower and the statue, otherwise adjust your position. Stand tall and get low to try different angles. Try a horizontal shot if your lens is wide enough.
Check your viewfinder for people that may walk through your shot.
Best Time of the Day and Best Season
Afternoon is better to photograph the skyline and morning is better to shoot Lombard Street. Since the view towards the bay and the skyline is more spectacular, I recommend the afternoon. As with all viewpoints, clear days are best.
Time required
Parking on Telegraph Hill is next to impossible. Finding a nearby spot will take you some time (up to 30 minutes). The line to take the Elevator up is usually not that long (15 min). Photography from the top should take no longer than 30 minutes and photography at the base of the tower will take you about 20 minutes. Altogether you should account for about 2 hours.
Equipment
- Wideangle Lens
- Normal Lens
- Telephoto Lens (400mm or more to shoot Lombard Street)
- External Flash Unit, Diffuser, Reflectors for Murals inside the tower
- A sweater or jacket to block the reflections on the Glass
Fees
$4.50 (adults), $2 (children)
Difficulty Photographing
Not being able to use a tripod and shooting through windows makes this one of the more difficult places to shoot in San Francisco. I recommend that you try some handheld photography shooting through your kitchen window first.
Close Locations
- Ferry Building Farmers Market
- Pier 7
- Fisherman’s Wharf
- Pier 39
- Lombard Street
- Cable Cars
- Maritime Museum
- Alcatraz
Useful Resources
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9 Comments
Andre, Are these from your archives, or have you been too busy?
A little bit of both. I write a lot, but I try to keep about 2 weeks of drafts at hand, so that I can assure a steady flow of information should I be busy. That means I have to make up later to replenish my supply of drafts.
I have a publishing schedule and I try to stick with it. Cranking out articles is gets faster over time.
I stick to a format and I have somebody proof read my work. I try to be as efficient as possible, planning what to write and when.
I’m so glad I’ve found your blog. It will be a tremendous resource on my visits to California. I like your format. It’s easy to read and suits the requirements of photographers from different experience levels using a variety of brands of gear. I wish someone would develop such a blog for my state.
This is a great site! If there’s one thing I wish I was better at, it’s taking photos. It seems the harder I try to get it “right,” the worse it ends up looking.
One thing I’ve noticed in my pictures – it seems the ones I’ve taken on overcast days are generally superior to all the others. There doesn’t seem to be a washed-out effect as there is in bright sunlight. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this because rarely do you see pictures in galleries shot on overcast days.
It begs the question: What am I doing wrong on sunny days?
It’s hard to diagnose this without seeing an example. Generally sunny days produce stronger shadows. The dynamic range of our camera’s is limited, so they usually have trouble getting detail in the shadows AND highlights on a sunny day.
If you are shooting anything without the sky, overcast days are usually better for that reason.
If you include the sky in your shots, it will be much brighter and may look washed out on overcast days.
Generally you need to expose for the highlights and make sure they do not get clipped (use the camera histogram for that). Once the highlights get clipped you cannot restore them, but you can boost the shadow brightness in Photoshop.
I usually find that what many people define as “washed out” can easily be fixed with some level adjustment, saturation and contrast boosting in photoshop.
When you “expose to the right”, you are sometimes not even using the entire dynamic range and your images may end up too bright and looking “washed out” because “exposing to the right” always requires adjustments in software to get the most out of your pictures.
Got it! I’ve actually printed out your reply to use as a guidepost. Thanks again!
I posted about dull looking pictures on my other website before: why pictures sometimes look dull
Over there you will find a lot more resources to help you debug the problem. Don’t hesitate to send me an email with sample pictures.
Andre
This might be this blog’s greatest blog post I have ever seen
The more I read, the more I am convinced that this is the greatest blog on the intertubes. You, Sir, have magnified the greatness of San Francisco many fold.