 David R. Rose |
How To Make Prolonged Exposures I'm new to photography, just getting into it, and one of the things I'm interested in is making prolonged exposures, say anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes. I'm trying to figure out how to do that exactly, and just can't. I've already read the owner's manual on my camera, checked a number of sites and asked some friends, so hopefully someone here can help me? I'm using a 35MM camera.
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Paul Mundt |
Try doing a Google search using your choice of words eg: photography long exposure You should find plenty of places offering tips on how to do this. Long exposure photos can be quite interesting. There is a recent (Jan 06) National Geographic with an article about the Grand Canyon. If I remember correctly, one of the photos was only moon lit, with quite a long exposure. It created some dramatic lighting. My daughter took a photography class and was doing a set of night long exposures with a 35mm film camera. What we found worked well was to pre-shoot with a digital camera to get the exposure where we wanted it. Once we figured out the exposure with the digital, then she would take the photo with the film camera. A great way to learn long exposures - at least the medium long ones (up to about 15 seconds).
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Bob Cammarata |
This is not difficult if your 35 mm camera has manual controls. You will need to have a "bulb" setting on your camera and a threaded shutter button to accept a locking cable release. You can get a meter reading by opening your aperture ring all the way to wide open and turning your ISO dial higher and higher until your meter can get a reading off the light that's available. Long exposures will produce some unnatural, surreal colors with daylight slide film so taking several shots of the same scene...bracketing over, is recommended.
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Mark Feldstein |
Greetings David: It'd probably be more accurate to ask Google about "time exposures". You'll also want to get a basic understanding of reciprocity failure of films, which you can start to get by reading the product info. sheet that comes with the film itself. Mark
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David R. Rose |
Oh, thank you all for your help. As it turns out I don't really have the kind of camera I need to do exposures for as long as I want; at least, it doesn't seem that I do. It's not a threader shutter button, or anything like that, so I'll have to look into that. If you have any more advice or help, please let me know; thanks again.
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George Anderson |
Most 35mm SLR cameras, though not all, have a indefinite exposure or 'B' bulb setting for use with a remote release cable, some have a similar 'T' or time setting. A cable release may be mechanical and threaded to the shutter release button, or electronic, in which case there is usually a port on the camera body to attach a dedicated remote release cable. Sometimes extra accessories like an optional grip are required. Cameras that do not use batteries to hold their shutter open on 'B' or 'T' have an advantage when doing long time exposure, for obvious reasons. Always list the brand and exact model name/number of your camera when you post - many of us may use the same one and can tell you what accessory you need to start shooting.
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David R. Rose |
Oh, sorry-Canon EOS Rebel K2 3000V.
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Andrew Laverghetta |
Yeah, in an EOS camera, there should be a plug-in on the camera somewhere. It's mechanical. You'll have to find out exactly which shutter release they use though. Something that I like to think about is what exactly I want to make "18%" gray. If you use photoshop, that's about the color of the gray screen that comes up before you open either the browser or any photos. Anyway, I'll usually set the aperture as large as I can (in AV mode), lock exposure, and then find out what that will equal at around f/16 or f/32. Usually unless you're going to make passerbys disappear, you won't want to go much higher than f/16 or f/22.
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