So last night went out into the cold... my always trusty D90 however was not so...

I could not really say old faithful was faithful to me last night. The camera started acting all buggy in the cold weather. Overexposed shots... Flashing green LCD screen... Then getting a "CHA" error code.
While it was only 36* out with the windchill it felt much much colder, and being right under the Brooklyn Bridge out next to the river it was not fun to say the least.
Let's just hope most of the pictures that were on the card were saved.

update... all is well with data in the card... unfortunate though about the overexposed images... but they turned out to look half way decent in B/W...
The first two were what I was able to salvage. Others were so blown out that even BW couldn't save them properly.

Seems the only thing that could have salvaged these shot would have been bracketing. Never forget about bracketing, specially night shots or important shots. It's not like it used to be with film. Digital bracketing is FREE. It only takes a few seconds and can really save a shot, and, allow for HDR treatment.

Marcel, I really was not going for photos to do anything serious. This was really an impromptu outing of friends to take pictures. So it was more over a hang out and take pictures type of night. So I was not working too hard on trying to do composition on the shots or trying to take that million dollar photo...

If I was doing bracketing, I am sure that any of the items that ended up overexposing would not have been any better, as I am sure of cold weather issues being a culprit. I would take 1 photo that looked great. Change and narrow aperture and then blown out shot with something like F16 and 10 second exposure...

I'm not sure cold was the problem I had my camera outside a few times yesterday and it was a high of a cozy -19 and low of -24 and exposure meter worked fine. Maybe battery getting low or needing a change of settings??

nope... doubting the settings issue. took the same picture 2x one comes out overexp... 2nd came out ok.

do you look thru the preview,, and have hightlights on,, to see where you are overexposing? night photography is a bit of an art, because often the light meter gets it wrong, due to the balance of light and then really bright objects, I tend to do some test settings first, dialiing in, and then work on composition, I really like the one with the inclusion of people. what a city,, what subjects,, endless.. NYC!!!!!!

I like the one with the people, too. Good saves, btw!