moving cars in a city, light effect?

[vee.x]

hey so I'm a new photographer and I'm going to be visiting taiwan very soon. ive been looking through some photography books and I noticed an effect very commonly used. I'm not sure what it's called but the effect of controlling these certain factors create a image that shows moving car headlights as a strand of light.

I'm pretty sure this has something to do with the shutter speed and aperture. but I'm just not quite sure how to control these things yet!

if someone understands what I mean and could help. I would really appreciate it

 

[markmullen]

Light trails are what you're after.

You'll need a tripod, or somewhere sturdy to rest your camera as you won't be able to hold it long enough.

Set the ISO nice and low (eg 100), put the camera on the tripod, set shutter priority (Tv) and a nice long exposure (several seconds). In busy fast moving traffic you'll not need as long as in slower moving stuff, experiment with the shutter speeds, 10 seconds upwards to see how the trails develop.

If you've not got a cable release use the self timer to trigger the camera so that you don't shake it pressing the button.

Light trails work best when the background is also nice, light trails across a black background can be a little dull, on this one for example the University of Leeds formed a nice backdrop, the bus was a lucky catch.


Mark Mullen 52 - Week 5, Leeds University At Night by mark_mullen, on Flickr

 

[PGD]

What a coincidence, I was just going to put this image up as reference myself only to find you picked the same subject as well Great minds ay

This is made up of a number of exposeres around 20 sec long. I took several exposures to get more traffic in the shot, then layered the shot up in PS. Otherwise on this quiet road (at that time anyway) the shutter would have needed to be open for about 20mins to get that volume of traffic moving across the viewfinder.

So the apature is set high, say around f16, shutter around 20sec to allow enough light to cover the rest of the scene, and capture traffic movements while your at it