Originally posted by Sol Invictus My idea would be to do multiple exposures and blend them in Photoshop. Essentially, you want to combine a well exposed shot of the lighthouse with a shot of the beams that has all the beams radiating out.
Take one or a few shots of the lighthouse that are well exposed. Don't worry about the beams. Next, take another shot where the beams are clear. More than likely the rest of your image is going to be way underexposed but don't worry about it. Just worry about the beams of light.
After you have your shots, using layer masking in Photoshop to combine the well exposed lighthouse with the light beams.
I appreciate the idea on how to combine shots, my problem is with capturing the static beams in the first place.
The photos I have seen with radiating beams from lighthouses are mostly done with star filters that artificially break the light into radiating points.
What I saw the other night was four light trails that were constant. I thought it would be a nice shot to have the 4 light beams emanating from the light and the rotating one as well. In thinking this through, something I obviously did not do at the time
it occurs to me that having the sensor see those 4 beams may not be possible. The problem is that the rotating beam may eliminate the 4 static beams because its stronger and with a bulb exposure of 60+ seconds the moving beam will have made at least one complete revolution. During its transit around the 360 degrees it may, by virtue of being the stronger light source, make what is visible to the naked (the 4 static light beams) eye completely obscured to the camera’s sensor.