Streaking car lights??

G

Gene Sung

Veteran
I wanted to video some streaking car lights, and am not sure how to video it.

I know for a still photo, you would set the shutter speed really low and shoot at a fastest f-stop. I tried that in video mode, but no streaks.

Should I try to shoot the 8 fps burst mode (didn't think of that till this morning)? Or do I need an intervalometer for streaking lights?
 
You could do a time lapse with an intervalometer and a shutter speed of like 1" or so and you'll get some nice streaks.
 
Can I do it without an intervalometer? Just with the camera?

Spent too much money on lenses lately. Oh wait... this is a camera (ie. out of control crack habit), so you probably gotta keep spending. Hehe..
 
hahahahah!
No kidding man. I know exactly what you mean. Did you want the footage "time lapse" style or more real time with streaks?
 
probably just more real time with streaks. It seems like it should be easy, but then again, I couldn't figure it out last night.
 
It's actually not easy. You can't get realtime with streaks because the streaks are only as long as the vehicles move during the exposure and with 24+ exposures per second, they get pretty short. You can either do it as a timelapse or fake it in post by shooting as close as possible to 360° shutter (1/24th of a second for 24 fps video) and then using some kind of time echo effect to repeat frames in time over the top of themselves. So, for any given frame, the effect looks at a series of previous frames and composites them together. It works best when the lights are the brightest things in the scene so that bright objects don't get overexposed.
 
Easiest just to motion track the lights in After effects, and then apply the tracking data to either a particles generator or a dedicated light streak plugin. Just have a google for After Effects Light Streaks, there's no lack of tutorials on the net.

I suggest using a locked down shot for when you do tracking since it gets complicated when you have to start applying tracking data to tracked elements.
 
I would also suggest an intervalometer, but you don't need one. As was noted above, take photos in shutter priority mode, with a long exposure time. Just keep in mind you'll need to take 24 photos for every second of video :) I'd give that a shot and see if it gives you what you want.

If you have an HVX you could use the frame rate hack to do this with ease.
 
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