Last week I went out with mountain biker Steve from Little Rider Lane. Steve messaged me saying that he had a new light from Full Beam Australia, the Trail LED Halo, that he needed to test and wondered if I would like to join him. I have been looking to add to my mountain biking series, Night Riders, so thought it was a good chance to do so. We met at 9.30pm when it was nice and dark at a trail near Belrose and headed out from there.
The Halo light was a beast of a machine. So much so that for most of the shots we had to power it down so we wouldn’t over-expose the landscape around him. I had a couple of other lights from my little bag’o’tricks with me as well. I decided against taking my big strobes out with me and instead took only a couple of speedlights and my Nao headlight from Petzl. This is a great little light as it adjusts to level of brightness it needs to be. For those that understand speedlights it is like having your speedlight set on TTL. I used this for the shots of the Steve with the big streams of light behind him. I used the flashes when I wanted to freeze him in place.
The first shot below was a test shot done without flashes. You can see the rider but only if you look really closely. On the next shot we took some levels and set the flashes. The third is the final shot picking up the trail of his headlight and the flashes freezing him in place.
For the next couple of shots I threw on my headlight and lit Steve as he went by me which creates the nice wide light trails. Again I used the flashes to freeze the rider. Unfortunately, the light from his headlight lit the trail so well that I am missing the bike in the shot. The final shot is a faster exposure and lit with just the flashes and his headlight.
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