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How To: Light Trails
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Alex_R on 02 April, 2008 06:35:00
 
How to : Light Trails          Light trails make an eye catching picture, and
the best part is there really easy to achieve. This is how I got mine.       
You Will Need:
Camera (duh!), ideally with up to a 30sec exposure time or “bulb” mode
Tripod
Ideally a cable release to avoid nudging the camera and blurring your image on
long exposures
A reasonably busy dual carriage way or motorway
Warm clothes!
The Shoot:         You need to scout out potential location while it’s light.
I’m sure most people are fairly close to a dual carriage way or motorway,
which is a good start.  The ideal position is above the road, and for extra
interest being at one side or the other rather than shooting straight into the
light.    Obviously to be above the road you need an overpass, a foot bridge is
probably the safest idea. Its also worth hunting out a stretch of road without
any / many street lights, as they tend to wash out the red of the brake lights,
which I think ruins the effect.             In terms of time of day, the road
needs to be busy and it also needs to be dark, or starting to get dark or the
cars won’t have their lights on. My images were taken at around 8.30pm.       
     It’s also worth mentioning that I used my kit lens for this (canon
18-55mm) and it was perfectly up to the job.
So, set the tripod up on the over pass, I had the legs of my tripod right up to
the barrier. I used my Canon 400D with a cable release to stop anything other
than the light from blurring.          Try different exposure lengths, my shots
were taken with a 30sec exposure, but I have seen some interesting results with
both shorter and longer exposures.    My 400D will only go up to 30sec exposure
time but it does also have “bulb” mode (when set to bulb mode the shutter is
kept open for as long as the shutter button is held down), so I could use longer
times as long as I had something to time it with.             The aperture of my
shots varies, I used shutter priority mode, so the camera sorted this out for
me, but if you like to use full manual I’d suggest trying a variety of
different apertures to see which produce results your most pleased with. That
said my camera used f/20 for most of my shots.             I set my ISO at 400;
I don’t think a higher ISO is really necessary as with long exposures the
sensor gets plenty of light for this purpose anyway.          As you will be
shooting in low light levels you may find it beneficial to manually focus the
shot, as auto focus may find it difficult to lock onto anything.                
     Right now your set, start shooting! Try loads of positions on the overpass,
and for variety I’d say try to shoot the curve of a road rather than a
straight, or try a roundabout.     Hope to see lots of light trails in the
gallery over the next few weeks.