Photographing street lighting

I wish it was possible to be more positive about what you might achieve with a great Pentax camera, but there are limitations!

I think the reality is that this type of scene is going to challenge the dynamic range of even the highest end camera, at least if the aim is to reproduce a kind of 'what the eye can see' image. With film you could meter for a mid range tone at night, and let any hot spot highlights (such as bright lights) burn out somewhat, which was often an attractive effect.

On digital if you want to see anything realistic of the lights, you'll have to meter close to them, rendering large parts of the scene as pitch black. This might be OK in a creative sense, but I think it is unlikely to look anything like what our human eyes would see, or what the 'customer' ordered. Its a tough one!

I wonder if you could try some HDR for this? Say 5 shots, exposed for the blacks, through to the brightest lights? Again, it may not look that realistic, but might provide the information that is needed. I'd suggest the Fusion method in Photomatix as a good bet.

You can get a crappy tripod on ebay for next to nothing. Okay it will not be great, but it will be better than wedging yourself against something as long as you don't use it in windy conditions, near heavy traffic or jump up and down next to it.

Wha-hey! My field of expertise. I am a lighting engineer and am currently the Chairman of the Scottish Region of the Institution of Lighting Professionals (formerly Institution of Lighting Engineers). I currently work as the street lighting engineer for a local authority.

As far as photographing street lighting is concerned, you can NEVER hope to get a true representation of the night time scene in a photograph. Besides, every persons perception of the night time scene is different. The only meaningful information you can get from photography is a direct comparison of installations. Anything else is a representation as recorded and presented by a sensor, some in-camera software, some post processing software and then viewed by biological instruments and systems (eyes, optic nerves and brains), no two of which will see the same thing.

My most recent photographic exercise was to provide comparative photographs of a road lighting installation which dimmed to 60% output after midnight. I set the white balance to "tungsten" (the closest approximation to high pressure sodium lighting), set the camera to manual and set the aperture to F3.5 (wide open). This kept the shutter speed as fast as possible and reduced the effects of any light trails from cars. I then fired off a few shots at different shutter speeds to try and achieve the closest approximation to my perception of the scene. I then kept the same aperture and shutter speed and fired off some shots from exctly the same spot after the lights dimmed. A tripod is a "given" for these shots. No post processing was carried out at all.

To be perfectly honest, the difference in the shots produced were actually greater than my own perception of the scene, probably due to the adaptation of my own vision to the changing light levels.

The only way to show the performance of a lighting installation to a person (or people) is to get them on site after dark to see for themselves.

To summarise, night time photography is great fun, and can also be useful in giving an indication of how a lighting installation performs, but as far as presenting an accurate rendition of the performance of a road/street lighting installation is concerned, in my experience, forget it.

Well said

I thought it funny that the OP ignored my post at the beginning and
painted all the following posts green

During the 70's the head photographer for BICC (Ron Callender?? )who
was involved with street lighting produced some very technical
proofs in the BJP over a period of several weeks to show that
film just couldn't record street lighting levels accurately.
And that any such photographs were meaningless

Look at this photo you could read a book under that
lighting if it was that bright

You couldn't even record home lighting levels accurately.
Show someone an interior with daylight balanced lighting
and one with the normal yellow/orange tungsten lighting
and they will prefer the daylight one. But if you put
the daylight bulbs in their home, they'll change them
back to 3200K tungsten very quickly

Your point is well taken, but the OP was tasked to photograph the street lights, so we gave him info on how to do it.

It is a fact that no two people will see exactly the same. And it is also a fact that the human eye has no color memory. Show two color patches with close shades to somebody within a few minutes, and ,if asked, the person will likely tell you they're the same color, even if they're not.