It can be hard enough getting the family together at Christmas, let alone getting good photos of everyone. Who’d have thought Christmas tree lights could make the ordeal that much trickier? Turns out if you’re not careful, you could end up with a bunch of shots with tree lights that look off or super-bright, ruining your images.
Fortunately, Mike Duval from LensProToGo has this informative video explaining the ins and outs of photographing Christmas tree lights.
So, you have a couple of options. The easiest one is to take your photos with a shutter speed of 1/30th or 1/60th of a second. At these settings, you should never see flickering lights. This will make it hard to take snaps of moving targets, but that shouldn’t be the much of an issue, with Christmas involving a lot of still, posed photos.
Alternatively, if you haven’t purchased your lights yet (or are willing to get new ones) you can make sure you get “full-wave” LEDs, rather than half-wave. These will never cause problems with your photos and you can snap with abandon.
How to photograph LED Christmas lights in holiday photos [YouTube, via PetaPixel]
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