Technical question

[sandnsea]

So last year the mechanical element that opens the McCullough bridge over the Siuslaw caught on fire. The McCullough's are the beautiful art decos in Oregon, mostly on the coast but there's at least one on the Columbia River Gorge too. Anyhoo, they had to put mega money into the bridge and in the process they have apparently fixed the lights that illuminate the 4 towers, which haven't worked for many, many years. Our city paid for the lights, for all you deficit hounds, lol. So, on July 4th, they are going to light the bridge and I'd like to take some pictures. They are supposed to produce an amber glow with 18-180 watt, low pressure sodium lights, for whatever that's worth. I can use my daughter's Canon digital, which at least has some manual settings. Tips?? Thanks so much.

[MajorChode]

1. Here's what I suggest

I'm not sure what kind of camera and/or lens you have, so it's hard to give specific instructions.

You'll need a tripod for best results. It is possible to photograph them without a tripod, but you'll have to take the pictures early into twilight when there's still plenty of ambient light. If you have a tripod, disable any auto ISO settings and set the ISO to the lowest numbered setting. Set the camera to aperture priority and choose a setting near the middle (say f/8 or so). You will probably need to disable the autofocus on the camera, because the camera may not be able to focus in low light situations. You'll want to use a lens hood, if you have one, to prevent lens flare from other light sources. Start taking pictures immediately following sunset when there is still plenty of ambient light and continue taking pictures until it gets as dark as it's going to get. That way you'll have a full range of ambient light vs man-made light.

You can also take several frames while panning the camera side to side and up and down which you can stitch together later. There are a few free photo stitching software applications that are free. I use photoshop. This picture was taken from my hotel room in Victoria, BC. I didn't have a tripod with me, so I couldn't get some really good shots, but you get the idea. Just make sure you overlap the frames by about 1/3rd.

I'm not going to post this picture since it's a panoramic, but this links to my photobucket page:
http://tinyurl.com/2efv3qh