Photo Comp: May 2011 - "Long Exposures"

[GoatFoam]

Night mode often bumps the iso up, which is where a lot of the noise will be coming from. If possible fix the iso fairly low. If you have manual mode use it, second best is shutter priority, failing that just hope the metering does the right thing.

[RiK]

Good point about the ISO. If you set the ISO manually to the lowest value you can (usually ISO 100) then even in auto mode it's going to need a longer exposure.

That being the case you're going to want to do everything you can to keep the camera steady, so firstly hands off! Ideally use a tripod, or at the very least stand the camera on something solid and then to prevent camera shake when you press the shutter, use the self-timer mode. Some cameras will have a short 2-second timer for that very reason but otherwise just use the regular 10 second one.

[RiK]

This just a KODAK Easy Share. It's awful TBH. I'm using the night settings to get long exposure. I've been using this one since my fancier one broke.

Don't knock it, I've seen some stunning shots done with compacts.

Here's a great example (not one of mine) from Flickr taken with a Fuji compact.


Untitled by owenfinn16, on Flickr

[Meow]

Whooosh

[RiK]

You obviously figured it out then..

[Meow]

You obviously figured it out then..

[GoatFoam]

I never managed to get the timing right on car pictures. I always seem to finish setting up the camera just after one goes past, then the traffic dries up.

[RiK]

I never managed to get the timing right on car pictures. I always seem to finish setting up the camera just after one goes past, then the traffic dries up.

Err, so how about not pressing the shutter until you see one coming?

[Zoot]

An old one, I'm afraid (no time to get out and do anything these days -sorry).

Difficult to stop the tungsten light washing everything out with something like this, but I loved the willow in the shot. I have photgraphed that many times, in snow, wind etc.

[GoatFoam]

I never managed to get the timing right on car pictures. I always seem to finish setting up the camera just after one goes past, then the traffic dries up.

Err, so how about not pressing the shutter until you see one coming?

The way it works is this. I get to the road and start setting the tripod up. Several cars zoom past.

I now have the tripod up. No cars appear.

Eventually I get cold, put the camera away and start folding up the tripod. Several cars appear from nowhere.

[Truder]

So, I were toying around with the old camera. It's a Fujifilm S5500 and I were looking in the instructions for how to manually set exposure lengths and it seems to only do a maximum of 3 seconds? Anyway to test it I got my Dad to wave his phone around with the light on and it came out pretty snazzy actually but I were wondering if anyone could offer any tips on how to take better photos etc? And generally, if anyone has any knowledge of this camera?

Here is the photo that I took messing about with it anyway: -

[GoatFoam]

I had a look at the online manual. It seems that although you can only get to 3 seconds with "shutter priority" mode you should be able to do 15 second exposures in manual mode.

Page 38 of this: http://downloads.fotosource.com/public/ ... -S5500.pdf

[Truder]

Ah yeah, found it. 15 seconds does seem like quite a long time but I guess to take any kind of long exposure photo for that long would need to be in the dark? It is pretty cool though doing this kind of thing learning about features this camera has that I've never really touched.

[GoatFoam]

Learning is what this is for, and getting into manual shooting will set you up for all sorts of future camera use.

The moment when "stops" and "EV" clicked was the biggie for me. If you get that then you can drive any camera that gives you "manual".

At the risk of being patronising. f-stops & EV are exponential but iso and exposure are linear. To maintain exposure then opening the lens up by 1 f-stop requires a halving of shutter speed or sensitivity. If you are lucky enough to have a camera that tells you what it is going to do in one of its auto modes you can use that relationship to convert it into some other set of parameters in manual.

Maybe that just says something telling about my night shooting method. I tend to turn the sensitivity right up, get a crap shot with sensible lighting and work backwards from there by dialing down sensitivity and moving the other settings accordingly.

[Stuart B]

I know I picked and all, but this one from tonights late-night excursion came out pretty well: