London Eye at Twilight

A photograph of the base of the London Eye taken at twilight with the LX3. I like the light bulbs hanging off the trees and reflecting off the pavement.

I would have preferred a much faster shutter speed to capture more of the London Eye spokes but I needed to get rid of the tourists, snappers, pedestrians etc so this is a 4 second exposure.

According to WikiPedia’s entry on the London Eye:

The London Eye (also known as the Millennium Wheel) at a height of 135 metres (443 ft), is the biggest Ferris wheel in Europe, and has become the most popular paid tourist attraction in the United Kingdom, visited by over 3 million people a year.

At the time it was erected it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, until it was surpassed by the Star of Nanchang (160m) in May 2006, and then the Singapore Flyer (165m) on 11 February 2008.

However, it is still described by its operators as “the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel” (because the entire structure is supported by an A-frame on one side only)

[Panasonic Lumix LX3 | ISO 80 | 24mm | 4 seconds]

Day 157: Westminster Pier

05 June 2008, 2200 Hours

London Eye and Fiery Sky

This picture of the London Eye against the backdrop of a fiery sky was taken in the Summer of 2008 but I have just got round to processing it.

The fiery sky reminds me of J M W Turner’s paintings of London Skies.

Profile of the London Eye at Sunset

A photograph of the London Eye taken with the Panasonic LX3 and then with the Canon 5D Mark 2.

This isn’t a scientific test; the point of views are not the same and the camera settings were different as well. LX3 was also in 16:9 format when I took the shot (the 5D shoots in 3:2 format).

Relevent ExIF for both:
LX3: ISO 80 / 24mm / F5.6 / 1/25 seconds
5D Mark 2: ISO 400 / 24mm / F4.0 / 1/400 seconds

I had no plans to compare the results when I took the shots, therefore the 5D Mark 2 image was under-exposed and corrected in Lightroom; otherwise, I have used the same settings to convert both images from RAW.

Normally, I would correct the lens distortions in Photoshop but for this exercise, I have kept the distortions.

LX3 image:

5D Mark 2 image:

Eye Sunset