Motorway at night

Canon600D

Canon600D

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Mark
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Is there anything you guys would do differently with the light in this shot to maybe make the tails more vibrant and the rest not as bright? I tried various shutter speeds and at 5 seconds it was a nice colour but the tails were not as good as the motorway was getting less and less busy. ISO was 100 so tried to get it as dark as possible.

Camera was shaking a bit due to wind also but only my first attempt at a motorway shot.


M50 at night

Second shot with some different settings in Lightroom plus a shutter speed of 10 seconds versus 30 above.


M50 at night II
 
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Would have loved to see it from the center of the bridge
Also love the car lights on the 30sec exposure, but love the overall look on the 10 second exposure.

But regardless, I like these kind of shots.
 
Hi - yeh I wanted to take it from the centre but there's a huge centre piece of concrete I'd need a cherry picker not a tripod to get over it :)
 
You could also try setting the aperture to a higher number or find somewhere with less lighting around.
 
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For me you have a lot of black at the top of the shot. Maybe you could try and either tighten in or crop it.

The sky is interesting when you have objects (planes, stars, moon etc) but just as black it takes too much away from the area of interest.
 
Williams - I can imagine it was a lot harder to get right as you only had one chance.

Thanks for feedback everyone.

Tonester that's exactly the type of help I was seeking out, thank you. Great shot you took.
 
Thanks Birrew.

I bought an rc-6 today so looking forward to trying more night time long exposures.
 
I think I went a bit too heavy with the luminance on the red though! I had to adjust the WB in Lightroom quite a bit, I hadn't used tungsten on the camera so that was the first hurdle. It's not perfect and I was rushing off to work so only really had one or two chances but I've a better understanding now of what I need. The lens here only went to f16 but I used f22 in the picture below using a wide angle, both quite different shots in some ways.

 
Firstly I'd like to thank Simon for his kind comments :confused:

To your photos, it's not really the best time of year for light trails, ideally you want to be out when there is still some colour in the sky and also plenty of traffic on the roads..this helps to avoid that I call abbreviated trails..basically where you can clearly see trails that start or end mid exposure..that said on your first to the main issue you've suffered from is as you say wind...some times there is nothing you can do an you just have to call it a day for long exposures...basically you need to try what you can to steady the tripod, so spread the legs a little, don't raise the centre column, if you can weight the tripod down, take the strap off the camera as it acts like a sail...even put yourself between the wind and the camera...honestly because of the effect the wind has had on the first two I'd have deleted them...but then I'm a fanatic who will no longer accept less than spot on :cautious:

Now the later ones your actually not far off with the while balance on that first edit which is impressive as that lighting is murder to try and correct...you just need to boost the red channel a little...on the last one you've put far to much magenta in there the headlights are pink :eek:...you need to watch your levelling even more so when you've got street lights as the last pair are in need of some rotation to level them out
 
hi - just seeing your post now, thanks for the help and detailed look into each picture.

I'm glad I put the top two up due to them being so bad, with the comments here I've been able to use them as a valuable lesson :LOL:

Stuff like taking the strap off etc I just wouldn't have thought of so thanks again (y)
 
Attempted this same stretch of road again last night. The white balance is better, the colours are better but I used a 70-200 F4/L this time and the centre piece of the road is too much of a feature in it. The main reason I chose the lens was the f32 option but I think a wider lens is more suited now that I compare shots.

 
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