Once a year just around sunset approximately 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of Montreal streets are blocked off from automobile traffic. As night falls on Montreal thousands of cyclists from the very young to very old mount their trusty two-wheeled steeds and take to those closed streets for an evening of pure magic. It’s the Tour la Nuit.
Night is falling. No tripod. Not even a monopod. Cyclists are whizzing by with no means for me to photograph the event. Or was there? At Ursula’s insistence (and her assurances that the cyclists whizzing by would look great) I decided to get creative by switching my Canon G1 X to “Handheld NightScene” mode. In Handheld NightScene the Canon takes three pictures in rapid succession, then combines those images in-camera to produce a single image with low noise and good resolution. If I held the camera very still, that would have the effect of giving me reasonably solid backgrounds while creating a flowing effect with the bikers. In other words the triple shots would combine images of stationary objects, but anything that moved (such as the cyclists) would appear in three locations spaced at intervals of up to several feet depending on the speed at which they were traveling.
I was a bit apprehensive at first, until I reviewed the shots and found that I liked the effect. Here are some more examples:



Decisions — Murder in Paradise
The Globe — Murder in Luxury
Cool effect!
Thank you, Victor.
Seems you could also achieve that effect with a camera that has an HDR setting. Like the iPhone 5S. I’ll have to try it.
Possibly, but the HDR setting on my G1 X requires a tripod, whereas the Handheld NightScene mode does not.
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The Ghost Riders are very cool!
Thank you, Peg. I’m so glad you enjoyed the effect.