Capturing night lights using motion photography

Last night, while we were on the road, I decided to take out my 35mm digital camera and snap a few motion pictures. I played around with different effects, like moving the camera around during exposure.  I included below some of my favorite shots plus the exposure settings. 

f/2.5@1/5  For all the photos, the ISO was set at 400 and an 85mm lens was used. 

f/8@.6s  The bright lights in the middle of this photo are the lights of a police car. 

f/10@1.0s  I moved my camera in circles during the one second exposure of this photo. 

f/10@1.0s  This photo and the next are of Christmas lights. Festive!

f/10@1.0s



Motion photography, especially at night, is a lot of trial and error with shutter speeds.  Fortunately, with digital photography, camera settings can be adjusted rather easily after viewing photographed effects.  Just make sure that your camera is set on manual mode or shutter speed priority.  Normally camera shake occurs at one thirtieth of a second (1/30) or longer.  Other variables that impact blur effect includes subject's movement, photographer's movement, and panning of camera.  In the last two photos shown above, for example, I was panning (following the subject with my camera) while I was in a moving car.