Steady city with blurs?

[silver163]

Hello,

I live in Chicago and I have often seen photographs of busy intersections where the city itself is in focus but the cars are only visible by their headlights or taillights, which nothing much but a blur. how can i do this with my pentax k100d camera? please help?

 

[Mr_Bester]

Set up on a tripod with a long shutter speed. You should be able to meter the shot. It wouldn't be a bad idea to use the timer or a remote shutter. That would reduce any shake you get from pressing the shutter release.
Dug

 

[peppies]

For this kind of night photography you definitely need to put your camera on tripod as you will need long exposures and you want to avoid any camera shake.

- set the camera to ISO 100 (this will reduce the noise)
- use cable release or self-timer
- You can do this in shutter speed priority mode and experiment with different times - anything between 16-30 seconds; or
- manual mode, shutter 16-30 seconds at f8-f22 aperture

 

[burtharrris]

Guess and check my man. You have an LCD which makes it very easy to get it right. Try it out with f/8 and 8 seconds, take it up or down from there.

A nice feature to keep in mind, a wider aperture makes streetlights look like blobs, and small apertures make street lights look like stars. Side note: the star will have the same number of points as the number of aperture blades your lens has.

 

[silver163]

thanks everyone, much appreciated!

 

[Iron Flatline]

You will be surprised how long 6-8 seconds can be...

 

[usayit]

I went through this experimentation a few times... I measured with a stop watch how long it took for a car to enter and exit my viewfinder. I set my shutter that length of time and metered accordingly. If it is too long then an ND filter will help


Just another way to try..