How To Shoot Long Exposures
Long Exposures are tricky to capture, there are many ways of going about doing them, but you can never really nail the result you originally intended, unless you have a lot of practice taking long exposure photographs. Here are some tips and tricks that will help you in your quest for the perfect shot.
Lights of Williamsport, originally uploaded by Daniel Hellerman.
Use a remote shutter release. They are usually not to expensive, I would recommend the wired one especially for low light situations. The reason for this is twofold, one is that you don’t screw up your perfectly framed shot by moving the tripod, and the second is to keep the camera from shaking. If you are in low lighting, the vibrations from your finger hitting the shutter can cause blur in your photographs.
Use A tripod, you can not hand-hold long exposure photographs, it simply will not work. Do not substitute a tripod for a monopod either, that is a terrible alternative for long exposure photography!
Use a mid range f/Stop something around f/11. This will allow you to get good, smooth light without overexposure.
Start at ISO 100 and work your way up. I usually start with a 5 second exposure with my ISO at 100 and my F/stop at 11. This gives me a good idea where the highlights will be in the photo. I then work my way towards the exposure I like the best. I will do say, a 30 second exposure at F/11, and if its not bright enough, I will do the same exposure at ISO 400 as an experiment. I will also lower the f/stop to around a 5.6 to let more light in.
Try a high f/stop as well. Experimentation is key, when shooting a picture where I want to capture light trails, I will often go up to an f/stop as high as 32 to allow for very little light to be captured but a lot of detail in the motion of the image.
Experiment. I cannot stress this enough, experiment, experiment, experiment. Keep trying different combinations, there is no “sunny 16″ rule for long exposures, just keep trying. You may like the results even if they are not what you expect!
SASC Building Lights, originally uploaded by Daniel Hellerman.
