Light tracks Los Angeles
It’s the light trail, man. It’s where all the lights crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains back before the trains started…
LOL! Sorry, that was crazy talk.
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Light trails! — those photos with the long lines of swirling light that look a bit fantastical as well as science fiction. They’re produced by keeping the video camera shutter (the “eye” thing that available to let light into the lens) open longer than usual.
And nowadays you don’t even requirement a huge elegant video camera to produce them. A great deal of smaller cameras let you change the shutter speed (in this case, enhancing it as much as a full second or longer). I utilized a point-and-shoot (the Sony DSC-RX100) — actually, my preferred point-and-shoot of all time.
You want to look for the setting on your video camera that controls the shutter speed. On my Sony, it’s the “S” setting on the dial.
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To get this shot, I set the shutter speed for 20 seconds.
That’s a while, as well as the essential is to keep the video camera as still as possible, ideally setting it on a tripod or windowsill (an improv tripod), which is what I did.
Normally, the shutter opens as well as closes in a fraction of a second, typically a fortieth or sixtieth of a single second, however by leaving it open a full 20 seconds while the video camera itself stays still, the static objects in the shot, like the buildings as well as highways, appear to be still, while the moving objects in the shot, like the lights on the cars, are caught as lovely tracks of light. whatever likewise appears brighter (making it a excellent method to catch stars in the night sky).
(Side note: conversely, by setting a quicker shutter speed, like to a thousandth of a second, time appears frozen. That’s exactly how professional photographers do things like catching a baseball player’s swinging bat, or a flying hummingbird with wings that aren’t blurred, or catching a single decrease of water, or a specific blog writer woman jumping in her dress.
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To keep the video camera as absolutely still as possible, I likewise utilized the two-second timer feature. That method I didn’t even have to press the shutter button, which would have triggered the video camera to relocation a little.
I was likewise sitting in a pitch black hotel space like a psycho creeper, LOL! however there was a technique to my madness… I turned off the lights so they wouldn’t interfere with the final picture (I likewise turned off the camera’s built-in flash).
The end result? Light tracks of LA cars and trucks on the freeway!