Light trails

Light trails is pretty easy to capture, Here is the way how to get them.

After seeing my Light painting photography album, my friends started asking me how i captured the light trails??? Is it editing in Photoshop or any technique to capture. So, finally they made me to write a small article about it.

For this you need a camera with manual mode, Tripod and a light source. Switch the mode dial on your camera to manual mode to control the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, light metering and white balance. Before going how to capture them, first we will go through few basic things about the photography.
ISO
The ISO speed determines how sensitive the camera is to incoming light. Lesser the ISO, the lesser will be the noise. So, set the ISO to as low as possible. i.e. ISO – 100.
Aperture
aperture setting controls the area over which light can pass through your camera lens. Narrow aperture will gives good depth of field. So, choose a narrow aperture’s to get a sharper light trails.
Light Metering
Light metering is used to determine the proper exposure for a photograph.  Set the metering to Multi-zone or evaluate metering such that camera measures the light intensity in several points in the scene, and then combines the results to find the settings for the best exposure.
White balance
White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic colour casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Set the white balance as per your light source. I am using a LED light, which gives pure white. So, I set the White balance to fluorescent.
Shutter Speed
shutter speed is a common term used to discuss exposure time, the effective length of time a camera’s shutter is open. In light trail photography shutter speed plays an important role. Try with different shutter speeds varying from few seconds to minutes depend upon the situation. Some DSLR’s will have the bulb mode. In bulb mode we can open the shutter for desired time.

Procedure for capturing Light trails
Choose a dark room with a plane back ground. Mount the camera on a tripod or stable surface to avoid hand shake.  Set the self timer to 2 sec and click the shutter button. When its finishes the self timer, took a live torch and then rotate in circles or the desired shapes in front of the camera at a distance of 3 – 4mts for a period as per the predefined shutter speed.
This is the final result


Exif info: Shutter Speed – 8 sec,  Aperture – f/6.4, ISO – 64, Flash - OFF.
If you use flash, even u can get the model who is making this light trail


Exif info: Shutter Speed – 8 sec,  Aperture – f/6.4, ISO – 64, Flash - ON.

Exif info: Shutter Speed – 8 sec,  Aperture – f/3.1, ISO – 200, Flash - OFF.
Capturing the Light trails created by the moving vehicles will be interesting. This picture is captured at the Nagavara signal, outer ring road, Bangalore.

Exif info: Shutter Speed – 4 sec,  Aperture – f/8, ISO – 64, Flash - OFF.
If you practice, you can make many experiments with the slow shutter speeds. Even you can write names in the air, but dont for get to write the letters in inverted form. So that the camera will takes its reflective image and you will get the normal as below.

Exif info: Shutter Speed – 8 sec,  Aperture – f/8, ISO – 64, Flash – ON.

Exif info: Shutter Speed – 5 sec,  Aperture – 6.4, ISO – 64, Flash – ON.

Exif info: Shutter Speed – 8 sec,  Aperture – 9.0, ISO – 64, Flash – ON.

 

Hope so, this article is useful for you. Let me know your comments and suggestions. Here is the complete set of light trail pictures.

 

Light trails