First Attempt at Light Trails

Rod Boughton

Rod Boughton

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Name
Rod
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This is my first attempt at light trails, any advice on how i can improve them.

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I must warn you that i only have a Nikon P500 bridge camera, so i am restricted with shutter speeds and apertures.

Rod
 
hi, rod, for a first attempt, they are ok bearing in mind the restrictions of your camera, however, may i suggest that that you take the pictures before the light levels drop to much, other than that keep experimenting.
Darryl.
 
What is the longest exposure that you camera will allow you to take? as all I can find online is that it can do from 2 seconds-1/1500th of second but this looks like it may be a little longer than that in these :thinking: on the first you have the makings of a real nice sky but in the second there appears to be a lot of jpeg compression possibly from the saving process or from the file type/size selected in camera

If you camera is limited to a 2 second exposure it is going to make things a little hard, but what you could attempt is to take multiple maybe 20-30 x 2 second exposures and stack them using software, such as free to download starstax, it's important that if doing this that the camera is not moved this could generate good results, try and keep the ISO as low as you can, use a relatively small aperture and if available use manual focus as this looks like it may be a little soft...

Check out my guide to light trails linked in my signature, it's aimed at DSLR's but there are still useful tips that should help you (y)

Matt
MWHCVT
 
Thanks Matt, it was 8 seconds, that's the most i can get, with the smallest aperture of f8

Rod
 
8 seconds is manageable (y) but you may still need to consider the stacking route (y) to get a really nice effect, find a second of road that is really busy and watch out for when there are lots of vehicle on the section (y) that will yield the best results (y)

Matt
 
What time did you take them? one thing i would say is try and get as much traffic as you can, although i guess it depends what you after but rush hour is best time IMO. A stack of shots like Matt says is a great idea

Also im told but (ive not experienced this myself so far) that its best when the traffic is slower, anyone else experienced this?

Another thing to think of is when you start the exposure, the first shot i think already had a car in shot? you can tell by a trail starts, i always try and do them with no moving traffic in shot but you can stand around for ages waiting on cold nights lol

These are cool thou you got there for a first go
 
Good first attempt.
The first one looks a little out of focus. Did you pre focus the camera or press the shutter all the way?
 
I did pre focus using auto focus but it was dark and difficult to see what it was focussing on.

Rod
 
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