Photographing Holiday Lights

[gcherry]

Ritz Camera has a good article on their web site about photographing holiday lights:

http://www.ritzcamera.com/static/articl ... ights.html (http://www.ritzcamera.com/static/articles/tips/holiday-lights.html)

I swear I'm going to get some holiday pictures this year!

[JulieM]

Glenda,

Thanks for posting that! We have the most wonderful Christmas lights decorating the national capital area here. I just noticed that they will be lit on Thursday and I'd like to try my hand at photographing some of the displays. I'll bookmark your link and read up on it later.

[photoshopsusieq]

Thanks for posting this article. Hubby and I are planning on a photo shoot of the Plaza lights in Kansas City and it will be a perfect time to try out some of the tips!

[gcherry]

You're welcome! I can't wait to see your photos!

[NMarti]

Great article Glenda. Thanks for sharing it.

[RobertSchuldenfrei]

Hi Glenda,

I plan to use some of these ideas this year. Thanks for the post.

Cheers,

Bob

[Winsunn]

Great article. I'm going to adjust my white balance and see what results I get.

[lexcell]

Glenda,
Thanks for taking the initiative and posting that article. It has some excellent advice and tips. With the holidays approaching, it is very timely. How about everyone posting their favorite holiday light photos so we can all share and learn from them.

A couple of thoughts come to mind here...

-To get the starburst effect from the lights you can purchase a star or cross screen filter. They come invarying points. Or, you can close your aperture all the way down to around f22 (if you are photographing just lights and are on a tripod) and you will get the star efect.


-Another fun thing to try is to zoom your lens while the shutter is open. You have to be careful to avoid too much camera shake but, you can get some really cool effects from this as well. Again, you need a slow exposure and to be on a tripod for this technique to work.

Have a great time photographing the holiday lights. Looking forward to seeing the results.

[smack1019]

great article. Thanks for posting it!
Steve

[gez]

Another holiday light photo tip site:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-to-photograph-christmas-lights.html

[lexcell]

Most excellent. I like their tip about shooting earlier to get that beautiful blue twilight color.

[msbrad]

thank you very much for the tips.
m

[mrod]

OK, Laurie and all, here's a little attempt at trying a longer exposure while zooming. For some reason, the shutter speed wasn't recorded in the metadata, but I think it was around 2 seconds. I started at 18mm, and zoomed all the way up to 55 during those 2 second.

All I did was crop a bit. Everything else is unchanged.

The little experiment was two-fold: give Laurie's idea a try, and experiment with the new camera (D80).

I would have liked to get rid of the trucks in front of the house, but that wasn't my call...neither was the shooting time (8:00 pm for this one). Couldn't get out any earlier...I'll have to try that sometime...

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/17PqTcEZzcLkaZcqXy4BWHjWdQLsP3_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=17PqTcEZzcLkaZcqXy4BWHjWdQLsP3)

Mike

[Byron Gale]

Very cool, Mike!! Was this hand-held?

Byron

[lexcell]

Well done, Mike.
Is this done with your new camera? :) Good job on beginning wide and going to the tele. Both ways have different effects but your way works best here.
Keep up the good work!

[mrod]

Bryon: Thanks, and nope---tripod. A cheapo one, but you use what you have, right? I'm learning that acquiring stuff will be baby steps. :D

Laurie: Indeed it was! :D I'm having fun getting to know my way around...still a long ways to go...but that's part of the fun, eh?

Mike

[billz]

Mike - Very cool!!!

Bill

[tnwaltz]

Thanks, Glenda, George and Mike, for your tips on photographing Holiday lights. I took both of these photos between 6:00 and 6:30 this evening. As suggested in the tips, I set my camera to "tungsten" and I was totally amazed at how beautiful the sky turned out even though it was a cloudy evening here in Florida. I have always wanted to do this, but didn't have the courage until I read the tips. Comments?

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1JvCkqusxPsgc3uDF7FWT28fWjs70_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1JvCkqusxPsgc3uDF7FWT28fWjs70)

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1TmYjes2TRRS7rLemlQe0Mwmfuofd0_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1TmYjes2TRRS7rLemlQe0Mwmfuofd0)

[mrod]

I think they turned out great! I love the vibrant colors!

Mike

[GaryK]

Those are great.

Weird.. I hadn't seen these until now and had tried the same effect with my "sweet" shot, this morning.
It didn't turn out as nice so I never bothered posting it.

[lexcell]

Hey TN...
Very nicely done! I really love the first image. It literally jumps off the screen at me! The second one is good too but could use a tad more exposure...the lights are bright but become the entire image. Practice both zooming in and out...two totally different effects.