Street Lamp PIcs

[Shina]

My parents bout me a Canon T2i for Christmas and I was wandering if you guys can help me out with photographing street lamps. I have one outside of my condo and i really want to get a good shot of it, but i keep getting a ball of light. Help please!!!

[Doug Sundseth]

Your problem is that the brightness range between the lamp and the things it illuminates is quite wide, generally wider than your camera can handle, so you need to do what you can to reduce that range. Try shooting earlier in the evening or later in the morning, right after the lights turn on or right before they turn off. In those cases, you're getting additional illumination from the sun, which will let you narrow the range. If that fails, you'll need to take multiple exposures and combine them in post (HDR/tonemapping).

[Shina]

Is there a certain setting that the camera should be on?

[graciousness]

Set it to whatever mode you are comfortable with. If I say use Manual mode but you don't know how to use it, then it's useless. If you use Auto or P mode, then you can only hope for the best.

Look into the times of hours that Doug suggested, and you can also google for HDR techniques.

Cheers,

Grace