Your lessons are great, and right to the point. I have been studying photography for years, now focusing on night photography and most instructors just talk about themselves, thanks for being so direct and helpful !
Thanks for this! I was doing a time lapse on my iPhone one day and saw an opportunity to do light trails with my DSLR. I had NEVER done it before though I had read about it a little bit. Fortunately I had a second tripod so I gave it a shot. The results were pretty good for someone who never did it before! So I liked your photos and the tips of shooting on the street. I've been trying to find spots "high above" but they are a challenge in major cities (at least mine). I think a lot of overpasses have fences and barriers for safety reasons (or preventative stuff). But I liked your street photos. I'll have to give it a shot once the weather out here clears up!
Good for you. You can't keep an inspired photographer down. Yes, there are obstacles all over the place in my city too but we do the best we can right? Good luck with your next light trails shoot.
Ray, some very interesting photos. Have you ever photographed a Ferris wheel at a local fair. In the 70’s when I was young, I climbed up on a parked flatbed truck at a fair, placed my camera on a tripod and took several shots. That was the film day, but I got some interesting light patterns. There are some good spot along I-20 just out of Atlanta, but most of the roads over the interstates have fences that stop people from throwing things at the cars. You’re right, you definitely need to be careful in some areas, you could loss your equipment or your life, that is a very good tip.
Brilliant insight with using bulb mode for light trails! I've always tried timing intersections or when vehicles are about to come, which takes awhile. Have you encountered any issues with putting up the blacked out cardboard with dimming the photo, or it works fine mostly?
As usual THANKS A LOT! Your tips are wonderful! Though I made many night shots, after seeing your video I realized how primitive they are. With your tutorial I will certainly enrich my technique. I will include the tip with the cloth, and all compositional aspects of shooting at night. Thank you, Ray!
I was thinking the same thing. I want to make an exposure longer (30+ sec) but, without the carboard, I couldnt do more than 7 seconds. I hope with this trick it finally works.
Hey there Dustin. Thanks very much. In the back alley shot take another look at the end of the alley and you'll see light trails moving right to left in the image. Take care and thank you for watching.
Great videos as always. I got two Question: Q1. How do you avoid camera shake (even using tripod with self timer or so) from vibration (Cars/trucks passing) when you are so close to highway or near crosswalk? Q2. You are approaching beautiful city like LA and want to take night shot or light trails shot while you are landing; how do you avoid camera shake from plane/chopper vibration? Thank you!
Hey there. Q1...I haven't had problems with passing cars or trucks for 2 reasons. 1. I use a very sturdy tripod and ball head and 2. If your camera vibrates a little for say a couple of seconds then settles down again and your exposure is for say 40 seconds, then that little vibration probably won't register except maybe in the light trails and that may end up being a cool effect. If you are shooting from a bridge you may encounter almost constant vibration from passing vehicles and that can be a real challenge. Q2. I've never done light trails while moving so I honestly can't help you with that. Hope some of that helps and have a great day!
Hi Ruslan...Yes I did. In the photos that included the crosswalks I actually focused one third into the frame for maximum depth of field. I have a video showing this technique. In other photos I focused on signs or buildings etc.
Excellent tips, but the best one is about safety because you can get so caught up in what you are doing that you forget where you are or the time that you are there.
Great Video!......Hello from a UK Viewer. The Background is so important in an image, why i didn't think of this earlier is beyond me, I was so focused on settings I completely forgot about background goings on. So thanks for that!
Fantastic as always - lots of great tips. I had a go at doing light trails before but had too large an aperture which let in too much light. Will have another try and see if I can get it right next time. Thanks.
Thanks Laura...The other benefit of using a small aperture, say f/16 or f/22, is that you get those amazing starbursts wherever there are lights. Good luck with your next night time shoot.
Great tips! Answered a lot of questions I've had about long exposure photography. I will be trying these soon. Thank you for the great videos! Keep it going😀.
Got it first time thanks to you and a friends advice, only a quiet local road but as they went around a bend. Shot on Bulb which I’ve never used either
great tips! just 1 question, how do you manage to dp such long exposures of 30 or 60 seconds? There's one of 30 sec that it's not even night time yet, do you use a ND filter to lower the exposure?
Great video, I have just got into taking long exposures. I started doing day time exposures on water so I been using a 10 stop filter. My question is with doing night photography on light trails do you need you use any filters?
Thank you. As a 19 year old photographer I have to say that your video was amazing in terms of content and presentation. All the other tutorials on youtube are somewhat muddled by lack of organization. Your video was concise and even included real world examples. Great work.
I did try it yesterday, and it came well :) Many thanks to you :) I don't want to share link & spam your personal channel, but if you like to take a look, it's the last uploaded photos my 500px page :)
What a lovely photos! I enjoyed a lot while watching your video. I will definitely try this later. You mentioned the time of seconds but how to set it up? I just bought Nikon dslr D5300 along with kit lens AF-P 18-55mm not sure if it will work on it 🤔
Hi there. The best way to control the long exposures over 30 seconds is to use the BULB mode on your camera. This is the "B" setting. This way you can leave the shutter open as long as you'd like. Try it out and good luck and thanks for watching.
I'm new to photography and want to get into this kind of stuff. Do you adjust the f/ with a lens or with the camera? Also, what does changing the ISO do to this type of photo?
I use a DSLR so I change aperture in the camera. Lower ISO means a slower shutter speed thus making it easier to take long exposure photos. Hope that helps.
I use manual mode for exposures no longer than 30 seconds. If the exposure is longer than 30 seconds I set my exposure dial to the “bulb” mode. That way I can leave the shutter open for an infinite length of time..
Good catch Gareth. I forgot to correct for the segments you see of me (a little yellow). As far as the light trails shots are concerned, I skewed the headlights a little to the warm side. White lights didn't convey the feeling I wanted. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
This is cool stuff because you don't know exactly what you'll end up with in the final shot. A long time ago I used to set up my tripod inside my car and drive around at night while taking long exposures with ISO 25 film. Doing that gives a totally different perspective. Shooting straight out the windshield while driving gives a warp-drive effect.
Alexander...They ARE car lights. When you open the shutter of a camera for long periods of time, things that move are not recorded the same way that static objects are. The lights of the cars record because they are bright but the darker car does not show up. The curve in the lights is caused by the cars turning a corner. Hope that helped.
No thank YOU..I was in a vehicle the other night,taking night shots with my camera,and getting some interesting light trails.Since of course the camera was moving,most of the shots were a bit too streaked to actually use.You kept it simple,and I think I am going to use my cellphone with an app to control the camera functions as in tethering..I am using the Pentax k1 Mark2 FF ..
Hi Ashish. I'm a Canon shooter so I don't know too much about Nikon gear but more importantly I don't know what your specific needs are. I will say that Nikon generally make great products. This particular camera sports an extreme zoom on its lens...24-2000mm equivalent so it is often used for travel or even wildlife. It seems to be well constructed. Buying equipment is such a personal thing so I can't recommend or not recommend a particular camera but I will say that it is hard to go wrong with Nikon products. If you were wondering if this camera can be used for capturing light trails you should know that it does not have Bulb setting meaning you cannot leave the shutter open indefinitely. I believe the maximum amount of time the shutter can be open is 15 seconds but that's something you'll need to check into. I could be wrong. While you can capture light trails in 15 seconds I personally prefer to have more time. Hunt around, figure out what types of photography you'll likely be doing and take your time and you should come up with something that suits you. Good luck!
Absolutely you can do this with a Nikon D5300. When I do this type of photography I usually shoot in the range of 16mm to 70mm on a full frame camera, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. There is no "right" focal length for this but typically if you are reasonably close to the traffic you'll want something with a wide angle. Have a super day!
Would you ever consider coming to The Montreal Camera Club as a guest speaker? We are always looking for experienced photographers who would share their craft.
Hi again Kathy. Since I would rather not use the comments section for personal use I will give you my email and we'll talk that way okay? It's...visart66@gmail.com
I love the black cloth idea. It seems no matter how busy the street when I push my shutter button no cars come or one car will drive through with his high beams on and ruin the shot. I can just block that one out with a black cloth
Hi Ray my name is Ian. Many thanks for the tutorial. I have never been a night shooter really until bonfire night this year and this has given me new inspiration, I managed to photograph the fireworks handheld at shutter speed 1/5 with some great results. Now going to try the light trails. Cheers.
Thank you so much for these great tips, what does the carbourd do in bulb mode? Sorry if thats a dumb question am new to photography, just got my 1st camera , Lumix gx80 am trying to figure all this out lol
Hey Monty and thanks for the nice comment. Okay, when you place the dull black cardboard in front of the lens, it stops light from entering the camera. Pretty simple eh? and it really works. By the way, no questions are "dumb" and at some point in time we are all new to something. Enjoy your new camera and enjoy this beautiful thing called photography. Good luck to you!
SIR, can u tell me how do setting in canon 650D i tried using diff setting in manual mode shutter speed:1/10; aperature:F11 iso:100 still not working this was seeting little help me but accurate
Hi Mahesh. First off it should be dark outside without too much light around. This should make it possible for your camera to get shutter speeds in the 10 second to 30 second range. Set your iso to 100 and aperture to f/16 or f/22. If you still cannot get long enough shutter speeds you'll probably have to use a neutral density filter to allow less light into your camera. Let me know how you make out.
As mentioned in the video, you are going to want long exposures so a small aperture of say f/16 is a good place to start with an ISO of 100. What you want is a shutter speed of anywhere between 15 seconds to one minute. If you are not sure about all of this I have a tutorial on Shutter speed, aperture and ISO that gives some good basic info on how to use a camera. If you already know this, try going through this night photography video again with your camera in hand just to get familiar with some of the steps. Give it a go and good luck Tammar.
Hi Pauline. What you’re looking for is long exposures so darkness is preferable. Also, you want the light trails to show up nicely so darkness again is preferable. Also, cars 🚗 tend to have their red taillights on when it is dark outside. Having said all that, you don’t have to wait for it to be totally dark outside. You can start taking pretty good photos once the sun goes down even if there is bit of light in the sky. hope that helps and have a great day.
Hey Joban. Without a tripod you may try resting your camera on something like a wall etc. You just need the camera to be very still for this to work. Good luck.
