Long Exposure Photography

Long exposure photos, tips, tricks and sharing.

Anyone can take long exposure photos as long as you have 2 things. 

1. You will need a camera that lets you manually set the shutter speed.

2. A tripod or something solid to place your camera on.

When taking a long exposure photo your are allowing more time for the light to collect on the sensor of your camera (or film if you are old school)

Image by Pranay Desai

The best time for a long exposure photo is at night time or in low light.

You can get some amazing effects with a long exposure photo. Waterfalls will become milky, lights will sparkle and traffic will have amazing light tails.

Taking long exposure photos is all about experimenting to find out how long the shutter will need to stay open for the effect you desire.

                                                                                                                            A long exposure can be a relative term because a photo with a shutter speed of a few seconds does not seem all that long. But remember that most cameras usually take a normal photo at about 1/125th of a second.

Set your camera to manual or shutter mode and lower the shutter speed down to something fairly low like 1/4 of a second or slower. On most cameras once you start going into full seconds this will be displayed like this : 1", 4", 6" etc.

You will need to use a tripod or set your camera on something solid to help prevent camera shake. As you will not be able to hand hold a camera at such slow a speed.

If you find your photos are still a bit blurry even on a tripod you might be pumping the camera a bit when you press the shutter. To solve this use the self timer feature and stay clear of the camera while it takes the photo.

I like to keep my ISO below 400 when I do slow exposures but this can be a personal preference.

For SLR users who have a BULB mode that would allow the shutter to be open for as long as the shutter button is pressed.

This might cause a minor camera shake untill and unless you have really really firm hands and very heavy tripod. Its very wise to use a shutter release cable or a wireless trigger so as to minimize camera shake. In some cases there might me a need for exposures as long as 10 Minutes. Star trails for instance. 

I use a Nikon MLL-3 ( really cheap 600rs) for my long exposure photos. To increase the stability of the shot and camera you can also use a shutter delay mode. What a shutter delay mode does is lift the mirror a few seconds before the shutter opens and exposes the camera sensor. This adds to stability and thus the sharpness of the image. 

Long exposure photography is really simple. What matters is what you shoot and how you frame the shot. 

Make sure the shot is stable and a creative exposure will always look good.