Using Long Exposure for Light Trails

I have just uploaded a new video about using Long Exposure to create light trails.

We have already covered this topic when we were experimenting with light writing in previous tutorials but this just shows how any moving light can create it's own light trail. All we need to do is set up the shot and stay as still as possible!

With traffic, you get a great mix of headlights and taillights and the occasional indicator which, on a moving car, will show up as a dotted line as it flashes on and off.

When we set our shot to 15" (seconds) the SX40 automatically limits the ISO to 100. As annoying as this is, it doesn't really affect us too much when we are playing with light trails as the focus of the image is the moving light which provides us with the extra illumination we need. It is also handy in a way as then the only things we need to adjust are our shutter speed and aperture according to what settings are more appropriate.

My examples are based in a well lit street and therefore I don't actually need the lowest aperture number and the longest shutter speed to achieve my light trails because there woudl be too much light in my image. However, I want to keep my shutter speed fairly long so that I get a good amount of time capturing the light trails. Therefore, my first step, when knowing that my settings are letting in too much light, is to increase my aperture from the lowest, up towards the highest f number in order to block out a little more light.

Whilst this would probably be sufficient in a lot of evening street scenes, I have a lot of lights and a lot of cars in most of my shots, so there is still too much light entering the shot. Therefore, I cut my shutter speed down to 8" (seconds) and then down again to 6" (Seconds) in order to get the right balance of light in my shot to keep the scene illuminated, but so that the car lights don't over expose the image too much.

I left the images on my other computer so I will upload them late on but I just wanted to update the blog for the moment to keep you in the loop.

Things to remember:

1 - Always use a tripod. 15 seconds is a long amount of time to keep still and likeliness is, you will move and blur your image if you aren't careful.

2 - On a similar note, set your self timer to go at 2 seconds. This gives you enough time to press the shutter and either leave the camera on the tripod, or steady your hand, whichever method you are using and let the camera take the picture.

3 - Put your Shutter down to 15" (seconds), your ISO will be limited at 100 and put your aperture as low as possible. If you zoom, your lowest aperture will be higher up the aperture scale as it can't go aas low as f2.7 if you are zooming.

4 - If you image is too bright, change your aperture to a higher number. This will maintain a long exposure for the light trails but block a little of the light out. If this isn't enough, start to shorten your exposure time by a couple of seconds until the balance of light is right.

Step Twenty Seven - Using long exposure to create light trails