How to avoid light flare while shooting at night?

<p>Hi all, I've recently taken a couple night pictures as i wanted to record some trailing light from cars.<br>

Now, I'm quite (not 100%) happy with my first attempt, I like the light trails, but I find that the flare from the street lights is reeeaaallly distracting.<br>

Could anyone help me out and give me some hints/tips as to how I can reduce the amount of flare coming off of them?</p>

<p>Also, if someone could share with me how I'm supposed to post the picture so I can show you all what I mean that would be awesome!</p><div></div>

<p>Also, ignore the part about uploading the pictures. I seem to have figured it out. :)</p>

<p>ummmm, find a roadway without street lights, position your camera so that the street lights don't show in the photo.</p>

<p>Get a tall ladder, paint the side of the street lights that are towards your camera with black paint :-)</p>

<p>There really isn't much you can do about the street light glare other than not have any around, cutting down the exposure time will reduce the flare, but that will also reduce the "light trails" from the car lights. If the street lights are sodium lamps (they have a distinctive yellow light) you could get a filter that will block that part of the spectrum out, or use post processing to remove that colour from the finished image.</p>

<p>Besides not having street lights in the photo, I don't think you can.</p>

<p>I shoot night photos on film. But I don't process the scans in any way I don't know how to process with the enlarger, in the darkroom. I want the scans to represent the prints. With digital, theoretically you could dodge them down a bit to minimize the flare.</p>

<p>I also think that part of the distraction you say is present is mitigated with black and white. In black and white, they look the same white color as the other light. Not ugly cheap sodium orange.</p>

<p>Nutshell,<br /> Don't have street lights in composition.<br /> Dodge down flare a bit with PhotoShop.<br /> Shoot or convert to black and white.</p>

<p>And a flare from a light from just outside the frame, is going to be much worse. So watch that, and learn to block the flaring light with a hood and a flag of some sort. A 12x12 inch piece of black foam core is great for that.</p>

<p>Um, Lorne wrote faster what I wrote, and posted quicker. /agree</p>

<p>I tried to remove the sodium colour from the pictures ... leaves the lights as white balls, not much better</p><div></div>

<p>This particular scene has allot of street lights in it, giving it that sports stadium look...</p>

<p>Haha, okay thanks guys. So it seems that I'll have to find a better location with less street lights!</p>

<p> </p>

<p>One minor way to reduce the "distractability" of the lights is shoot with a wider apeture. This will reduce the star-like effect in the image and change it to a glowing ball. By keeping the shutter speed and ISO (unless you can lower it) about the same, and shooting with a ND (neutral density) filter or shooting at a slightly later time when there is less ambient light you can keep the overall exposure the same and achieve a similar effect without the 'light stars". This might help a bit. <br>

Try experimenting with varying your apeture, ISO and filters to alter the effect. Your best option, however, when shooting this kind of shot is to antipate the effect of street lights and other lighting distractions and a select darker and more isolated location. </p>

<p>An ideal setting for this type of shot, would be to shoot from a dark hillside within a urban park that has a winding road below and in front of you with few or no streetlights. Also, you will want a nice view of the skyline in the background. <br>

You only need one car to get a good effect. (In my experience red tail lights work better than white headlights for trails.) It almost doesn't matter where the sun is setting, since you will be shooting after it goes down, and besides your main subject is the car trails, the roadway and the distant skyline. The glowing clouds are nice addition, but not necessary. </p>

 

<p>Alex,</p>

<p>I think that the foreground grass and the skyline help make the shot here. And I love the clouds in the background. Any of them would be sacrificed with a wide open lens.</p>

<p>A full open aperture is going to remove the star points. But not affect the flare, it will just be turned into a halo around the lights.</p>

<p>Derek,</p>

<p>There is one other option I failed to suggest earlier, use a lens-less camera. The flare is the inevitable product of light passing through a lens. A pinhole camera will have no flare, it has no lens. Those lights even flare with my biological lenses. I don't think there is any way around that, if they are included in the composition. You can get pinhole 'lenses' for DSLRs cheaply these days.</p>

<p>To answer your question, the star-burst is caused by diffraction as light passes by the junction of the aperture petals in your lens. The smaller the aperture, the greater the diffraction and the larger the bursts. Also, the number of spikes is in direct relation to the number of petals in the aperture diaphragm. Your lens has 7 of them, which is precisely half the number of spikes in your star-bursts. Lenses with an even number of petals (which are not as common) produce one spike per blade, lenses with an odd number produce twice as many spikes as petals.</p>

<p>This photo was taken at f/16 (very small aperture)<br>

<img src="http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r34/F1Addict/Miscellaneous%20Crap/IMG_3637_c.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>And this one was taken at f/4 (wide-open large aperture (for this lens) and has been color corrected)<br>

<img src="http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r34/F1Addict/Miscellaneous%20Crap/IMG_3636_c.jpg" alt="" /></p>

 

<p>Some lenses are really sensitive to light coming more or less straight into the lens tube.<br>

Try some other lenses, they may work out better.</p>

<p>I have one 18mm lens that is fairly decent for daytime, as long as you keep the sun out of it; but it is essentially useless at night.</p>

<p>My first thought without having done it is to first organse the photo so the street lights are away from the car trails**. Your example has them down level with the cars. Then to use a Graduated ND filter to hold back the 'over exposure' you are getting from the street lights, another way would be to mask out the street lights with your hand 'dodging' in front of the camera in a manner that the darkroom worker 'dodges' to hold back light when making an enlargement. A problem there likely would be the reduction in exposure for the dark areas around the lights. [Dodging has whatever shade [dodger] you are using in a continual movement so that there is not a sharp edge of the dodger which comes if it is stationary.]<br />If the dodger is smaller than the area to be dodged you can dodge throughout the whole exposure and since it is only over parts for any length of time you get an overall part reduction of the exposure<br>

A further snag to this idea is the inability to see through the viewfinder during exposure, so a case of estimation and guesswork as to where the dodger goes. Unless one organised a wire sports finder with a cross wire to show the bottom level of the lights to fit in the camera hot shoe. [ And you have a long enough arm to watch through the finder while dodging.</p>

<p>Probably faced with this problem I would take a pair of photos, one with a short exposure to capture the street lights and then the second long exposure to get the car trails. The flare I think only occurs when the light is over-exposed. A suitably short exposure of a light bulb will just show the [frosted] bulb* and that is what you are after I think. The snag with taking two shots is that there will be flare around the lights of the long exposure and I have not worked out a way to cope with that in editing. Possibly you need a 'bracket' of three or four shots so that you can use just the immediate exposured area around the lights from the intermediate exposures. The actual lights come from the shortest exposure and most of the picture comes from the long 'car trails' exposure.</p>

<p>*otherwise you would get flare around the filament of a clear bulb.<br />** I have just accepted the flared lights :-) Hoping that interest will be held by the car trails.</p>