There is a nice restaurant right by me with some interesting exterior lighting and I'd like to try some night-time photography this weekend. I haven't tried shooting at night before. Any advice or best practices? I'm assuming for the longer exposure a tripod is more critical than usual. Seems like some of the shots are more interesting with the headlights/taillights on?
I'd be curious to see what's worked for you guys or anything specific to automotive photography at night you've found that works.
I'm not a night-photography specialist by any means, and I don't do addition of false light (light painting, flash, etc), but I can give you some pointers.
The first thing is to make sure your auto-iso isn't on, it'll defeat the purpose.
Second would be to turn on your long-exposure noise reduction if you have it.
A tri-pod is absolutely necessary unless you want that old film grain look because of the high ISO.
Longer exposures tend to make lights too bright in order to get the darks up to exposure, so if you bracket everything it'll really help.
Always try the shot with the lights off, then parking lights on, then headlights on. If you do all 3 you can't go wrong picking the best one later.
Color correction is a big deal with night photography, so just set your white balance to auto and fix it later in RAW.
Oh, and ALWAYS shoot in RAW. If you're shooting in JPEG then why even bother? No control.
Try to use natural light artifacts as much as possible, like a light situated behind your subject, or street-lights, and in the FOG and drizzle.
I tend to use shallow DOF anyway, but at night it really helps remove the distracting objects.
I tend to look for places bathed in light too, and with interesting backgrounds.
And always remember that if you're going to use a small aperture and long exposure you're going to make all the lights appear to be stars.
Some examples. Let me know if you have any questions about any of them.

River Wall. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

Darker. (Explore) by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

The Sky Is Crying. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

The Emperors New Shoes. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

Walk The Night. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

Blues For the Red Sun. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

Screams and Whispers. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

Vapor Trail. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

Nicole. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr

I Am Legend. by
Andrew Thompson, on Flickr