Very OT: How to capture city night photographs

[nomad]

Hiya

Does anyone know how to capture those photos when the camera is on a tripod so that the street lights are like laser strings?? They use long exposure. My Q is, is metering used or is it trial and error?

Some pple have also said about zooming out to get the strings effect .. is this correct?

Cheers.

[agent]

I don't know how you'd get the street lights to look like lasers, but most people just point the camera torwards a street and set a reasonable exposure - then you'll find the laser effect, but it's produced by head-lights and tail-lights on cars.

[Biggles]

If you want the street lamps themselves to have a laser effect, you could try getting your exposure right first, then once you know the right exposure, try doing shots where you move the camera a bit for the last part of the exposure. That might create the right effect.