Everybody loves walking on a nice street in the city and window shopping. The roads in the city, the countryside or anywhere else have a common role player; the cars. The modern vehicles of today provide us with great flexibility to travel around. They are also perfect subjects of matter for photography with their shiny lights. A moving car will create a light trail in the night. If you take the picture of the moving cars with MIOPS Mobile Remote using the long exposure modes, the car light trails will create a nice trail effect on the picture.
Before You Start
We will be taking the pictures in the night, so we need to keep the shutter of the camera open for at least a few seconds. Don’t forget the rule that long exposure means you will need a tripod. Using a sturdy tripod will improve the quality of your pictures. Less shaking means less blur in your images. We want to see light trails in our pictures, not blur. You can use any modern DSLR to take such pictures. If your camera has the BULB mode, this will be very helpful as you can achieve custom exposure with MIOPS Mobile Remote Otherwise, just set your camera to a low shutter speed.
Photo by wideanglezen (Ryan Blass)While You Are At It
For such a picture, the location is also very important. Try to find a spot where there is light to none human traffic but a moderate flow of cars. If the spot is very crowded, then you will see just too many blurry human figures in the pictures. If the cars are just stuck in the traffic, then you will not have the nice effect of light trails. A connection road with no houses or shops around would be a perfect choice. Any nice environment like woods or a sea in the background will just make everything perfect.
In order to get a better view of the street, try to find a spot with some elevation. This will give you a better perspective of the road. If you want to see a beam of shiny headlights in the picture, then your camera should be facing towards the approaching vehicles. Otherwise, you will see the redness of the tail lights, but this is just a matter of personal choice. When you are already at the spot, it is a good idea to try both.
Don’t forget that you will be working in a dark environment close to fast-moving vehicles. Do not compromise your safety. Make sure that you are wearing reflective clothes and always watch for vehicles. Make sure that you don’t get into the picture as your reflective material will ruin the picture.
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What Else to Check?
Don’t forget to check the sunset time for that location. It may take another 60-90 minutes to get completely dark after the sunset. Also be prepared to stay about 30mins to an hour outside. Be sure you have appropriate clothing for the season.
Let’s Do It
Start with putting your tripod and balance it very well. You can use some weights to increase the stability. Set your camera to manual focus and focus to approximately the midway between your location the last point you can see in the picture. Set the aperture as large as you can. Switch your camera to BULB mode and connect MIOPS Mobile Remote to it.
We don’t want the camera to shake at all, so we will use the MIOPS MOBILE app on our phone. Connect to MIOPS Mobile Remote and switch to timed release mode. You can start with an exposure of 5 to 10 seconds. Review the first pictures you got. Adjust the exposure per the ambient light. As you have no control over the speed of the vehicles, you may need to repeat the shot several times. The nice thing is that the more vehicles pass in from of you, the higher will be the chances of capturing a great car lights trail picture. MIOPS Mobile Remote will save you a lot of time and effort to take those repetitive shots.
