The Trail of Lights!

/ Photography, Travel / By
This is normal 30 seconds exposure with Nikon D5200. It is captured from a bridge above the Banglore Highway.

Ever since my interest in Photography has grown, I have found Night Photography one of the interesting aspect. It is really great that how slow shutter speeds give you amazing output. For those who do not have idea about shutter speed; in simple words, it is the time for which your camera continues to capture an image through the lens.

Trail of Light
This one is captured using Canon Powershot SX130IS camera. The shutter speed is 8 seconds. The camera was kept on a small wall besides the footpath.

I have tried capturing Nights shots many times. Sometimes I got good results, sometimes the worst ones! But the study continues. In this post, I would like share few of the Lights Trails I have captured.

Trail of Lights
This is captured with Canon PowerShot SX130IS camera with 3.2 seconds of shutter speed. I had kept my camera on divider between footpath and actual road.
Trail of Lights on Mumbai Highway
This one shows Old Mumbai Pune Highway, captured using Nikon D5200 with 20 seconds shutter speed. I had no tripod with me, so kept the camera on the sky bridge itself.
Lighted Old Mumbai Pune Highway
This is captured from a sky walk bridge present on Old Mumbai Pune Highway. This one is with 30 seconds of shutter speed.
Banglore Highway, Pune.
This one shows Pune-Banglore Highway from Baner Tekdi, Pune. I captured this one with Nikon D5200 camera and a separate shutter release remote. The shutter speed here is 47 seconds.
Banglore Highway, Pune.
This one again captured with a separate shutter release remote with 42 seconds shutter speed.

I am no Professional photographer but would like to share few things I have learned by practicing (you might be already knowing these)

  • NOT to move the camera even for a fraction of second, once shutter release button is pressed. Better use Tripod, as most of night shots will have slower shutter speeds.
  • Though I started with Aperture Priority mode; I learned that, either Manual Mode or Shutter Speed Priority mode gives you better control over shutter speed. Also, I always try to get smaller aperture opening than f/8 (i.e. higher the N value, where N as in f/N)
  • Shoot in RAW if camera supports, as most people know; useful for Post Processing
  • Focusing could be problem in the night. Usually I use auto-focus and lock my focus on the main subject (in this case it might be a Road). Then I switch to Manual Focus mode and take the shot.
  • Our camera gives at max 30 seconds of shutter speed using normal shutter release button on camera. Hence I have used a separate shutter release cable (or remote) for taking control of shutter speed manually.

This brings us to end of this post, but not the learning!