Here is a photo that I shot handheld at night. It’s funny, I have a very cool Manfrotto tripod and recently I did even purchase a cool tripod bag, but yet I am still too lazy to carry the stuff out there to take some cool night photographs. The photo in this post was shot without tripod, because as said, I am way too lazy to take the tripod with me. I shot the photo with manual settings as I wanted to try out if it’s possible at all. I did set the camera to ISO 1600 with aperture f4 and 1/30 seconds shutter speed.
The photo was still way too dark, but with Lightroom I bumped exposure, the black and shadows. I recently started to take RAW photos instead of JPG photos, and you can really make bigger adjustments in Lightroom then. Anyway, I’d still say that the photo quality is bad, but I like the scene with the Trave River and harbor area of Lübeck at night. I don’t do a lot of night photography, but I definitely should convince myself to do this more often as I own a really good tripod.
Diary of Dennis 
I am the same as you Dennis. I don’t like to take a tripod or even a lot of gear out with me although the main reason for this is that I have to walk or catch public transport everywhere and it is a nuisance but if you want perfect shots sometimes you have to do it. I should use one more often because I don’t have a really steady hand. I do like your photo though particularly the yellow reflection in the water, having a good photo editing system certainly helps.
Yeah, exactly, it doesn’t matter if I use the public transport or if I go for a hike, with too much gear I will feel less mobile. For this photo, there was a wall on my left side that you can’t see in the photo, I leaned to the wall for stability. I liked the reflections of the lights too, that was the main reason why I tried to take the photo. I was actually on my way back from a hike at bright day time, and on the way back it became dark and I liked the scene and took the photo 🙂 You’re right, if we want to get quality night shots, there is no way around taking more gear with us, sadly. Sometimes it just works to use high ISO, but then there is so much noise… my D7100 does show you a lot of noise at ISO 1600 already, I fixed it with the de-noise feature of LIghtroom, but then the side-effect is a more blurry image.