I just found this wonderful article for beautiful
light trails, but without the Olympus unique and so convenient live composition function!
Asher
that article describes the normal way to get light trails with long exposures. I used to do them that way back in my film days when I was playing around with that type of thing.
it is true that most cameras will have a provision for taking long exposures.
long exposure is quite different than what Olympus provides with Live Composite. Instead of one long exposure of 30 or 40 seconds or even minutes, as an example, a shot like I have here is the result of one exposure of 4sec as a base and then continual 4sec exposures taken on top of it where only bright parts get let through. As a result, you don’t have to determine how long the exposure needs to be and the picture can never become overexposed even if the shutter was left open for hours.
The effect of Live Composite could be done (painstakingly) in Photoshop by using a whole bunch of images on separate layers, and then changing the Blend mode so that only the brighter lights show through —- just like many do with Star Trails. I’ve never done it that way, because I don’t have to with my cameras.