Photographic technique: photograph with the times long

To begin we need to have a clear idea of what we want from a picture with long exposition, for this I mean from 1’’, even if in some cases you can have wonderful results with even less time, for example, a landscape with flowing water.

It is very important to consider the instruments you use, in this case you may need a trestle proportional to your camera (if you use a reflex with a tele, you need a trestle that is able to hold the weight of the camera and the tele) and have a camera that you can set the exposition manually. As digital cameras work only automatically, you can get good effects keeping the ISO value very low, even if you do not get the same result that you can get with a reflex.

Let's consider starting with a good economic compromise that also allows you to get good results: an average trestle (approx 50 euros) and a bridge digital camera from 250 to 400 euros are between a reflex and a compact camera. They allow you to take pictures to 30’’ or using the Bulb expo, even longer expo.

I remind you that Bulb expo needs to be used with an outer button or a telecontrol, to avoid the moving effect that you can have pushing the button on the camera. Another method that I always keep the same for my shoots is the ISO value, except a few exceptions, like sport pictures at night, I always set it at a low value, a high value of the ISO can give you a shorter expo, but with a larger noise effect. The noise is represented by that ginned effect caused by a lack of light, where there is not enough light to impress the sensor, the software of the camera stains the pixel with the color of the closest pixel.

Most common applications for long expos are:

Night pictures, where there is enough time to adequately impress the sensor.

In this case if we snap something motionless and with any intrusion of moving subjects, we have to be careful with times to get a balanced picture.

Pictures where there are moving subjects photographed with a ghost effect, but keeping the shape of the subject around them. If we want to snap a square giving the idea of moving subjects, we can use a long expo but keeping the shapes.

Pictures where we want to get the light wake of cars. In this case there's maximum space for creativity, but be careful not to make to many composition areas, overexposed or underexposed.

landscapes pictures or twilight sceneries,in this kind of pictures we will get very contrasted colors in skies due to long exposition.

Night pictures to get the stars motion. In this case you must use BULB mode and use a telecontrol. pay attention not to take pictures of the moon, or you will have a unpleasant overexposed wake. Unless this is what you were looking for! You can have astonishing pictures with a static subject and moving stars behind.

Pictures where we want to show the water flowing. In this case you need to set the time according to the light, to the speed of the water e to the result we want. I usually recommend long expo for this kind of shoots, do various tests.

Landscapes pictures at sea or lake when we have a little reflux of the water. we can have a moving effect or a kind of blurred. This is a good choice in case of slow flowing of the water.

Long expo with programmed snaps to photograph thunderbolts. In this case you can program when to shoots, and the frequency you need. For example, in a storm you can set you camera in this way: 10" expo, shoot each 20". it may be very easy to shoot a thunderbolt!

If you want to shoot a static subject moving, you can even don't use the trestle.

Pictures with a moved effect, with a more particular subject, playing with the camera without the trestle.

Article written by Francesco Favalesi and translated by Giorgia Alba

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