Roue de Paris

In the last post, I described how I got totally useless results trying to photograph the Roue de Paris ferris wheel on my first evening in Paris. The second night, overcast but with no rain, I went out again to get much closer to the wheel and get both sharp "stop motion" shots and a good motion blur shot. With that goal in mind, I headed to the Place de la Concorde with my 18-200mm on the camera and the 70-300 on my belt for good measure. When I reached the Place de la Concorde, I knew right away that I was going to have much better luck this night.

The first objective was to get a sharp, "stop motion" shot. I picked a spot that actually allowed the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde to be part of the composition. After watching the wheel up close for a few moments, it became clear that my primary motion challenge was that of the lights decorating the wheel, and not the movement of the wheel itself. While I could certainly have pushed the ISO a bit to increase the overall exposure, I think this photo captures the ambiance pretty well.

As always, click on a photo to see a larger version.

40mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/60 © Richard Critz

Next up, get a good motion blur showing the wheel in action. This proved to be harder than expected because they didn't seem to want to run the wheel for any extended period of time. In a gross overreaction to my disappointing results the previous night, I started with a 15 second exposure. That didn't work. Not at all. Even 8 seconds was way, way too much but I can show you that one without fear of your clawing your eyes out. I also went with the smallest aperture the lens offers in an effort to keep the image from blowing out entirely while waiting for the wheel to move. That part, at least, did work.

48mm, ISO 400, f/29, 8 sec © Richard Critz

After a bit more fiddling about, I got what I was looking for with a 2 second exposure:

48mm, ISO 400, f/29, 2 sec © Richard Critz

And then the magic happened. While I succeeded in the getting the motion blur I was looking for, I still wasn't really happy with the image. I just didn't have that "pop" I was looking for. Then it occurred to me that the D300 has the ability to do something called "multiple exposure". This is a setting that essentially allows me to take a specified number of exposures and have the camera combine them all into a single image. I had never intentionally done it before (I did one by accident at my sister-in-law's wedding while trying to set up something completely different -- that didn't count). A mad scramble to find the setting in the menus ensues. Once I found it, I had no idea if it would work like a film camera where each subsequent exposure adds to the overall light in the frame, eventually causing the image to be blown out. I decided to assume this to be the case and promptly backed everything off 2 stops.

Well, it turns out, the camera is smarter than the photographer and it knew enough not to oversaturate the image. So after a several tests, I ended up right back where I started with the single, frozen shots for exposure settings. I did several with 4 exposures in a frame and ended up with several frames containing 8 exposures each. Those are the ones I've chosen to publish and here are 2, from different perspectives:

48mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/60, 8 exposures © Richard Critz

40mm, ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/80, 8 exposures © Richard Critz

20mm, ISO 200, f/22, 1.6" © Richard Critz

I then moved closer for some shots looking through the axis of the wheel. You may remember that I had the wrong lenses with me the previous evening. Tonight, I left the 12-24 wide angle in the hotel room and now I needed it. I made do with my 18-200 zoom but I couldn't get the angles I really wanted. I've included the best of the "blurs" here -- I think it looks a bit like a waterfall wrapped around the outside of the wheel. Some of the other shots can be seen here.

At this point, my fingers were starting to get cold and I was ready to hit the sack in preparation for the trip home the next morning. As I was folding the tripod I happened to turn towards the Eiffel Tower and realized immediately that I couldn't put the camera away just yet. I've always wanted a good shot of the Tower with its powerful rotating beacon at the top caught in the picture.

105mm, ISO 400, f/5.3, 1/3" © Richard Critz

I've also wanted to capture the many strobes on the Tower that light up at the top of each hour. When I was in Paris in July 2010, I didn't have my tripod with me so I shot a sequence of handheld frames and then merged them in Photoshop.

Photoshop merge of a number of handheld shots © Richard Critz

I was pretty pleased with the result but it still didn't capture the true effect. The magic was still working and I got it all in a single image without having to resort to the wonders of Photoshop.

112mm, ISO 400, f/5.3, 1/4" © Richard Critz