Long exposure w/o halo effect on lights

[sprockett]

Hi, just a question.. everytime i put put long exposure the parts of the photo with lights have this large bright halo effect that such that u can't really see the outline of the light itself...

how do u prevent this?


i was thinking:

use a larger aperture, and faster shutter speed....

but this might not give me the depth of focus i want...


anyone care to teach me?

thanks

 

[denizenx]

buy a catapult and shoot out the lights...
not possible via camera, since the light accumulates on the "film" and lamps have more light than trees, for eg..

OR
clean ur lens+filter... might be smudges or fogging...

 

[jasonpgc]

What you call a Halo effect is actually an over exposure of the light source. A camera can only capture a certain range of light level in the flim or ccd. If you have included the street lights in your picture, and you've set the exposure for the street to appear as what you would see in real life. Then the camera will over exposed the light source.

To prevent this,

1) Do not include light sources in your picture if you wanted to expose for subjects(eg,people) in the streets.

or you can set your exposure for the light source,

2) (Example for canon camera only) Meter the light source and dial in the exposure compensation value to +2. This will set exposure for the light source to the maximum light level the slide/print/CCD can accept without showing the "HALO". However, the subjects in the street will appear darker then what you would see for real life.