Three easy steps to shoot light trails
Shooting light trails is a great way to experiment with slower shutter speeds to capture fast subjects.
Photographing cars moving along a road at dusk is a great starting point, allowing the headlights and tail-lights to blur into long streaks.
In my experience, the easiest way to get great light trail images is to find a bridge over a motorway where you can safely set up a tripod.
Dusk is a perfect time, as cars will have their lights on, but you will still be able to capture plenty of detail elsewhere in the scene.
The three-step guide below will give you a good starting point for shooting your first light trails.
Light Trail Photography – the video
This is a video I did on 3 locations I visited in Melbourne.
The second part of the video focuses on the editing part of the photos with the darktable software
Set shutter-priority
With your camera and tripod set up in a safe location, put your camera into shutter- priority mode (S/Tv).
Using the finger dial, you can now change the shutter speed.
The camera will automatically work out the aperture value depending on how much available light there is in your scene.
Set shutter speed
You can choose any exposure length you want below 30 seconds, depending on how long you want your trails.
If there are lots of cars, 15 seconds might be enough. or even 5, but if the road is quiet you may need the full 30 seconds to capture enough traffic trails to get the desired effect.
Simply experiment for the best result.
Choose the ISO
Start off with an ISO of 100/200, as this is where your camera gives you the best quality images.
Check your aperture setting, and if it’s below you minimum supported aperture (this could be between f/1.4 and f/4) raise your ISO to 400 or 800 and check again.
Ideally, you want your aperture to be around f/8 to f/13, or above, for a wide depth-of-field so that everything in your scene is perfectly sharp.
If these are too many settings for you, just go for Auto ISO and the camera will decide for you
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Neat stuff Jacky. I had snapped a few light trail shots via the HDR option on my phone. Good to know how to do it on my camera now.
No worries 😉