Aperture | ƒ/8 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 17mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 15s |
Tag Archives: light-trails
Playing with Fire and Light
Steel wool, multicoloured lights, a dark area and long exposure shots. Great fun with Blarney Photography Club last night!
Aperture | ƒ/8 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 24mm |
ISO | 500 |
Shutter speed | 20s |
City Hall Light Trails
Passing cars in the night.
Aperture | ƒ/14 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 17mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 25s |
Light Trails Through The Grand Parade
The Grand Parade last night while I was out with Blarney Photography Club in Cork.
The shot is a 25 second exposure. For 20 seconds I exposed normally with the lens at it’s widest, but for the last 5 seconds I slowly zoomed from 17mm to 40mm to get the light trail effect.
Aperture | ƒ/22 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 17mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 25s |
Over at Rushbrooke
Looking across the River Lee from Monkstown to Rushbrooke on January 1st, 2015. Happy new year!
Aperture | ƒ/22 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 24mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 13s |
Glowing Colour
The Ferris Wheel in Cork all lit up at night.
Aperture | ƒ/11 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 58mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 10s |
An Garda
A member of An Garda SÃochána directed traffic in Blarney last night when Santa visited and the lights were turned on in the village.
This is a long exposure zoomed shot, of about one second duration with the flash firing at the end of the exposure.
To replicate:
- Make sure you set your flash to “second curtain”. Use Google to find out how on your brand of flash. Normally the flash will fire at the start of an exposure.
- Have the lens at it’s widest zoom.
- Set the camera to one second exposure in shutter priority mode (Tv on Canon cameras, S on others) or use manual mode with an aperture as wide as possible.
- Line up your subject, hit the shutter button and slowly zoom in.
If you’ve timed it right the flash will fire when you’re zoomed in right. They’ll be lit by the flash and any background lights will appear as streaks going towards them. It’s hard to get right and not overexpose your subject so keep practising!
Aperture | ƒ/13 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 20mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 1s |
Coburg Street Lights
The lights of Coburg Street and passing cars in a long exposure shot of the street from the traffic lights at the junction with Bridge Street.
This was a 15 second exposure at f/22. The lovely star shape of the street lights is because the opening in the lens was so small (at f/22) and the diaphragms of my lens. It takes a long time to get the exposure but it’s worth it!
This appears to be a beautiful example of Fraunhofer diffraction. It is due to the wave nature of light. The effect depends on the wavelength (that is, the color). It is most pronounced when bright light from a practically infinite distance passes through narrow slits, causing the light to spread perpendicular to the slits. This spreads a point-like beam of light into a pair of streaks.
Using a small aperture creates slit-like situations at the corners formed by adjacent blades. Thus, when you have a combination of relatively intense, pointlike, monochromatic light sources in the image and a narrow aperture, you should see a streak (of the same color) emanating from the points in two directions perpendicular to the blades…
…Finally, length of exposure is related to the occurrence of this effect, as you have observed, but only because exposures with bright points of light are almost always made much longer than needed to record the lights: you’re trying to see the rest of the scene, which is much darker. The brightness of the diffraction streaks decreases so rapidly away from their sources that if you used a sufficiently short exposure to properly expose the lights themselves, the streaks would be practically invisible.
Aperture | ƒ/22 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 19mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 15s |
Light Trails on MacCurtain Street
Ghostly light from passing cars hangs in the air on the corner of MacCurtain Street and Bridge Street in Cork City, Ireland.
This is the second of three light trails or light streaks photos I’ll post here in an unintentional series of long exposure photos. The first was my Light Trails in Blarney photo published yesterday.
Aperture | ƒ/22 |
Camera | Canon EOS 6D |
Focal length | 17mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 8s |
How to short circuit
Ever since I posted Short Circuit I’ve been meaning to post a small tutorial on how I did it. There were so many comments from people clamouring to know the secret of how I made traces of light dance around the picture frame.
Actually, nobody asked. Will was kind enough to suggest another title but otherwise it went unremarked. *sob* I’m going to tell you anyway.
The image is a long exposure shot, of at least 1 second and preferably 4 or 5 seconds. I simply stood in front of a construction site at night, lifted the camera, hit the shutter and rotated the camera around in my hands. Needless to say, I did not have the strap around my neck or I would have done myself damage!
At first I tried Aperture Priority mode, setting the aperture really small (big numbers, around F/22), but then I decided to do the obvious, and used Shutter Priority and simply set the speed(time) I wanted. Below are a few shots from that night, including the scene as it was on the night and some experimental shots as I practiced. The technique is really easy, but can create some really interesting and eye catching photos.
Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
Focal length | 10mm |
ISO | 800 |
Shutter speed | 1/10s |
Mr Whirly the ice cream man
An ice cream van in December? Yes, Mr Whirly was in Kinsale. Obviously someone isn’t bothered by the cold!
Aperture | ƒ/14 |
Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
Focal length | 18mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 25s |
So many light trails
Light trails from passing cars fill the frame with a golden glow on the corner of The Grand Parade and Washington Street, Cork.
Long exposure shot made possible by the traffic light switch on which I rested my camera!
Aperture | ƒ/22 |
Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
Focal length | 18mm |
ISO | 100 |
Shutter speed | 13s |