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CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / City Lights

exposure. For example, I zoomed from 135mm to

70mm during the exposure to get the light trails

you see in Figure 8-8.

I achieved this effect by pressing the shutter

release button, waiting 4 seconds, and then slowly

zooming out for the other 4 seconds. As you can

see from Figure 8-9, if you start out wide and

zoom in, the look you get is really different —

well, maybe not really different, but different

enough that you should just try it both ways and

see which one you like better.

You can use this technique with any light source,

but those that are easily recognizable make really

great subjects.

Use the zoom

One technique that can give you some unusual
effects when shooting light trails is to change the
focal length during the exposure. To do this, you
need to be photographing with a zoom lens and
you need to be using at least the widest aperture
that the lens has on the longest focal length. For
example, if you have a lens that goes from 28mm
to 300mm and from f/4.5 to f/6.3, then you need
to make sure that you are using at least f/6.3 or
smaller when you start photographing. This is
so that the aperture doesn’t change during the

ABOUT THIS PHOTO One of the best cars to follow when panning is a taxi cab. They are easily recognizable and the light on the roof makes
them easy to follow. Taken at 1/2 second, f/2.8, and ISO 200.

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