Long exposure in photography tips and tricks
Long exposure in photography explained
Long Exposure photography seems to be forever shrouded in mystery, I know many photographers that found it all incredibly confusing but it’s really very simple.
Our aim is to take a photograph a few seconds or even minutes long. Now why would you want to do this you might ask?
Well, so we can capture movement via long exposure in photography, it might be the clouds gliding across the sky or water moving in a river, a waterfall or the even the sea. It can also be used to capture star trails at night time as well as car headlight trails. It helps to create a surreal effect in our photographs and they gives us another dimension to add to our photography.
If you look at the two raw shots below. One was used with a standard shutter speed and the second was a long exposure photograph with a slower shutter speed of 2 seconds. Nothing was changed apart from the shutter speed.
As you can see the effect creates a completely different photograph hence what I was saying about adding another dimension to your photography. The beauty of all this is there is no editing involved and it can all be captured in camera.
So how do we achieve this effect?
I have my two cheat sheets below and if you want to understand more about Long exposure in photography than please read the sections below where I go into a bit more detail on what you need to know.
My Long exposure in photography cheat sheet without a Neutral density filter.
- In daytime you wont be able to take long exposure photographs without an ND filter so try this at dawn or Dusk when the light level is lower.
- Setup your Tripod, making sure it’s steady and put your camera on it. Yes it may seem obvious but the most important part of a long exposure photograph is to keep the camera perfectly steady while you are taking the photograph.
- Adjust your Camera’s ISO to ISO100 or 200 whichever is your lowest native setting. Google is your friend here. This step is vital as otherwise your camera will boost your ISO to give you a faster shutter speed.
- Point your camera towards some clouds, moving water, cars at night time or stars in the sky, anything that moves really.
- Zoom your lens out fully. Most kit lenses are 18-55 so in that case go to 18mm.
- Focus and compose your shot.
- Set your camera to Aperture Priority.
- Change the Aperture to F11 or F16. In aperture priority mode your camera will always select the correct shutter speed for you. That’s generally done by rotating the wheel at the back or top of your camera, google is your best friend there again.
- Take a few shots under different lighting conditions and see the effect.
My Long exposure in photography cheat sheet with a neutral density filter.
The most popular ND filter is a 10 stop ND filter so let’s start with that
- Using a ten stop ND filter in daytime generally gives you around a second or two of a shutter speed depending on how bright it is, towards sunset that goes up towards 30 seconds and beyond.
- Setup your Tripod, making sure it’s steady and put your camera on it. Yes it may seem obvious but the most important part of a long exposure photograph is to keep the camera perfectly steady while you are taking the photograph.
- Adjust your Camera’s ISO to ISO100 or 200 whichever is your lowest native setting. Google is your friend here. This step is vital as otherwise your camera will boost your ISO to give you a faster shutter speed.
- Point your camera towards some clouds, moving water, cars at night time or stars in the sky, anything that moves really.
- Zoom your lens out fully. Most kit lenses are 18-55 so in that case go to 18mm.
- Set your camera to Aperture Priority.
- Focus your camera and compose your shot.
- Fit your ND filter to your camera.
- Change the Aperture to F11 or F16. In aperture priority mode your camera will always select the correct shutter speed for you. That’s generally done by rotating the wheel at the back or top of your camera, google is your best friend there again.
- Take a few shots under different lighting conditions and see the effect.
Please read on below for a more in-depth explanation of Long Exposure in photography.
What exactly is long exposure photography?
As long exposure photographers we are simply keeping the camera’s shutter open for longer and it very slowly absorbs the image (light) for longer, this then creates a blurred effect on only the moving elements in your photograph like cars, stars, clouds or primarily water as seen in many of my photos. Of course the one condition to getting this right is that your camera can’t move while you are taking the photo.
So just to explain that again stationary items in your image come out sharp as they are not moving but the moving parts of your image comes out blurred due to them moving in your image while the camera is taking the photo.
I absolutely love long exposures because you are not actually capturing what’s there but what you see in your minds eye. Once you get used to working with long exposures you’ll start to see the sheer beauty in movement and what can be achieved with the creative license that they grant you.
You can use this effect to manually create the surreal out of the ordinary, to capture an image is a wonderful feeling but to create something you truly love via a long exposure is second to none and something you can enjoy daily.
Sorry, I am getting side tracked again… so as I mentioned we really need to keep our camera steady. I highly recommend a good tripod for all long exposure photographers, a good tripod might cost you a lot of money but then again it could last you 20 years. I tell all my clients buy a good tripod as then you only cry once.
LE photography can be anything from half a second to minutes long generally. Most of the long exposure shots you see on social media are under 30-seconds long though.
What are the advantages of longer shutter speeds in Long exposure photographs?
As I mentioned above with long exposure shots we get this creative license to magically create the surreal out of the ordinary. We can do this one of two ways, picture yourself at the beach with some lovely rock formations around…
You really need to think about what the scene says to you and then try and capture that exact movement we want in a single image. Creating something unique to you and only something you saw in your mind is now captured in a moment of time. how utterly cool is that?
Or, if you don’t have the time or the technique yet then don’t worry you can just pop on a ten stop neutral density filter and take a 30 second photo which completely blurs out the water and gives you that milky smooth finish, as a final step you can also convert them to black and white if you can’t handle the dynamic range that a sunset/sunrise image has.
Most people take these images on over cast days as it’s easier to deal with exposure levels. This really is a great introduction to long exposure photography.
Both styles can also work well for experienced photographers of course, I have two shots below taken at the same location with different shutter speeds as you can see they are very different. The resulting photography effects are worlds apart.
The above shot had a shutter speed of 1/3 of a second.
The above shot has a shutter speed of 30 seconds.
So here we go.
The biggest problems we face as photographers are…
How do we reduce the light level to the camera?
How does the camera interact with light?
These are the first two things we must understand and they are actually very simple. So stick with me 🙂
The first method is to use a neutral density filter, sounds complicated right?
Well it’s not,the ND (neutral density) filter simply acts like sunglasses for your camera. This darkened glass simply blocks light similar to the way sunglasses do, hence dropping the light level. So just think of ND filters as sunglasses that are available in different strengths.
You hear ND filters being called 10 stop and 6 stop filters etc… well what does it mean?
A 1 Stop of light reduction means the light level passing through the filter is halved, so if I am taking a photograph at 1 second and if I pop on a one stop filter it means to correctly expose exactly the same photograph I need to let the camera see the scene or soak in the light for twice as long so it now takes 2 seconds.
You can get apps for you phone like “ND Expert” that work out the maths for you. For example if I am shooting at 1/250th of a second with a correct exposure and I put on a six stop ND filter, then my shutter speed would be 1/3 of a second. With a ten stop filter it would be 4 seconds, again the app does all the work for you.
These Nd filters sits in front of the lens blocking a percentage of the light and can be purchased in two main varieties. Screw-on filters, these are round filters that physically screws on to the lens or secondly a filter holder which can hold a few different filters at the same time and can be removed easily, this easy removal is very important and I will come back to that in the next post.
The second way is to use the aperture of the lens, using an aperture like F16 will reduce a lot of the light going to your camera sensor. Now I know this sounds complicated again but think of it like this… The aperture on your camera acts exactly the same as your own Iris in your eye. When it’s bright your eye closes so you don’t absorb too much light and when it’s dark your eye opens wider to absorb as much as possible. Well, that’s what the aperture setting is doing (it has another huge purpose also, depth of field, that’s for another day).
We can control the Aperture on the lens in either manual mode (I always use manual) or Aperture Priority mode which is usually marked as A, AP or AV on your cameras dial mode. The more we increase the F-number or F-Stop the more we close the “iris” hence less light. By decreasing the light in the camera it means we need to take a slower photograph (shutter needs to be open for longer) to let the correct amount of light in to create the photograph which in turn creates the desired motion blur.
Lastly, your camera can also by itself vary the exposure time required through the ISO setting. ISO just varies the sensitivity of your camera sensor to light. The ISO setting should be set to manual and at ISO100 (most common) or the lowest real ISO setting on your specific camera.
Combining a neutral density filter, high F-stop (F16) and a low ISO means your camera will need to take a long exposure to correctly expose the image. This long exposure is just the cameras shutter being open for longer to let enough light in to make the picture.
Don’t forget to go to the bottom of the page for the settings section.
If you are in Ireland or coming to Ireland soon then why not join me on one of my Photography workshops I provide a range of workshops or one to one tuition sessions, these are all done in plain English and out in nature, they are ideal for all levels of photography enthusiasts.
If you have no ND filter try this…
You can do this from your bedroom window, balcony or back garden or even better go to the beach or a local river.
So just after (or around) sunset, tonight why not try taking a photograph of the clouds directly overhead. You should be able to see them moving via a LE photo.
- My top Long Exposure photography tips.
- Firstly setup your Tripod and make sure it’s solid then put your camera on it, yes this may seem obvious but stick with me.
- Adjust your camera’s ISO to ISO 100 OR 200 whichever is it’s native setting, google is your friend here. This step is vital as otherwise your camera will boost your ISO to try and help you by giving you a faster shutter speed.
- Point your camera towards anything moving like some clouds, water or even cars.
- Set your camera to Aperture priority or Manual mode
- Change the aperture to F11 or F16. In Aperture priority mode your camera will automatically adjust your shutter speed for you. To change your Aperture you generally rotate the thumb wheel at the top of front of your camera, again google is your best friend here.
- Take a few photographs under different lighting conditions to see the different effects. Usually its best to try this around sunset time as its darker then and you camera needs to expose the photograph for longer then and you should see some motion blur. It’s usually pointless trying this in bright daylight as the shutter speed will still be too fast.
Tip: Having a building in the image will help ground the image. This will not create a beautiful photograph but it will help you to understand how it all works. If you are at the beach then point the camera towards the sea.
If you are interested in ND filters and lets face it all good long exposure photographers should have them, I am delighted to be able to offer you 10% off all Formatt Hitech Firecrest filters with discount code HAYES10 simply apply the code at checkout on their website to get the reduction. Or go to my dedicated Formatt Hitech Discount code page here to see the latest offers.
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Do exactly same steps as above only this time you don’t have to wait for it to get dark. If you have a Strong ND filter you should get nice movement in day time.
As always if the clouds aren’t actually moving then LE motion blur wont work. So it’s a matter of trying it again another day.
Have a look at my photography tips and tricks section in the menu where I cover everything from…
ND Filters explained and how to choose the right ones,
Photography tips everything from filters to tripods,
Seascape Photography explained,
How to backup your photographs,
My secret tips to photography,
Nb. Always use a tripod. It’s impossible to keep the camera steady handheld.
I am delighted to be offer you the below great deals from
Formatt Hitech Firecrest Filters 10% off.
Pixpa website building platform 20% off.
Crann sunglasses & watches 15% off.
Thank you for reading my guide for long exposure photographers and I hope it helped you. If it did then please share it to help someone else.
See you out there,
Kieran.
Kieran Hayes A complete guide to LE photos and my top 10 tips by award-winning photographer Kieran Hayes For long exposure photography Clonakilty Co. Cork Ireland 087-9103794 info@kieranhayesphotography.com Kieran Hayes 5.0 39
