Light Trails, Central Public Library – Austin, Texas

Here’s another colorful view of the LED lights of Austin’s new Central Public Library. I like the contrast of the vivid blue with the red light trails. This was a 4 second exposure, shot of course on tripod. This is the view along Cesar Chavez Street (1st Street). The library entrance, featured yesterday, is located on the left corner.

I usually shoot my long exposures in Aperture Priority mode, especially when I create HDR brackets. However, this is a single exposure with the Canon G7X Mark II, shot in Manual mode, which I rarely use. I wanted to control the shutter speed, to ensure adequate light trails, but also wanted to have a sufficient depth of field. Also, being a single exposure, I took extra care with the exposure.

There are downsides to a smaller sensor, however, in this case, it allowed me to use a fairly large aperture of f5. In full frame terms, a f5 on a one inch sensor is f13.6. Enough to have the road and library in focus. As a result, I can shoot faster with a shorter shutter speed.