I spent some more time out on my balcony this evening, and set the camera to a specific ISO, and shutter speed, and took pictures while slowly adjusting the aperture in increments. At F3.5, ISO 400, and ten seconds, the lights were bright and washed out. As I slowly increased the aperture value, the photos gradually became darker and darker
I would say set your ISO at around 100 or 200, to minimize noise, and then play with exposure time and aperture size. Start off cranking up the the exposure time with a tiny aperture, and adjust from there, lowering exposure time while increasing aperture, then doing changing it up...once you get a feel for that start tweaking, messing with other settings and different timings.
