Lessons About Long Exposure Photography

First, always have a remote shutter release. This is one lesson which I’ve learned the hard way. While taking photos at noon, I wanted to show the movement of the passing clouds through time, in a single photo. I managed to create an effective exposure of about 22 seconds, out of five continous exposures, each about 8 seconds long. After the five photos were done, the camera basically stalled out, and to do this image sequence automatically, I’d have to choose the 10 second timer, which isn’t necessary and is actually a disadvantage because the 10 seconds would be enough time in many, if not most, situations, that the final stacked image wouldn't fill in the time time between some of the photos, creating an undesirable gap in the clouds. With my remote shutter release, however, I can go a relatively long time. So far, I have only learned up to 99 seconds with my new shutter release; however, with my Canon, I could’ve set my camera to go until the battery died! Another thing to keep in mind is that while photographing images to later compile into a much longer exposure, it’s necessary to use a long enough exposure, otherwise there will be gaps in the resulting photo. How long the exposure needs to be depends primarily on the amount of light available, however, you will most likely need to experiment with it to eventually learn what the minimum shutter speed would need to be. Yet another thing that I learned after doing long exposure photography, was that there’s a specific feature that should be, but isn’t, included in many modern cameras: and it’s called bulb ramping. The longer the exposure during daytime that you want in a single image, without stacking, the darker filter that you might need. It’s very difficult focusing through a 10 stop ND filter, and a stronger one will probably be nearly impossible to focus through, at least in most situations. However, it’s also true that it’s challenging to get the optimal exposure; I know this from my own experience; while photographing at Mt. Rainier National Park this late July, during noon, I struggled even though there was plenty of light around for me to focus through my filter. I had to take various exposures, ranging from five, to about 10 seconds, to get it right in camera, which is very important, because the primary issue that I had was that I was getting details lost in the exposures because of the intense bright white clouds, which were so much brighter than the very dark mountains below. Bulb ramping would help me, because I could then set my camera up on a tripod and then walk away, while the camera’s firmware would automatically take photos, adjusting the exposure each photo,Long exposure HDR would also come in handy in modern cameras, as well as a seperate, lowlight, sensor to help when the light levels get excessively low and/or the filter is excessively dark; sometimes, you can’t take all of your filters with you, so you might just take the darkest one you have. I still have yet to do a long exposure portrait, but I think that once I accomplish this, it’ll be quite a feat!