What Is Long Exposure Photography?
In what you might term ‘regular photography’, with your camera in an automatic or semi-automatic exposure mode, you’re likely working with a shutter speed of somewhere between 1/60 of a second and 1/4000 of a second. Â These kind of shutter speeds tend to cover most normal situations, from bright sunlight at midday, to occasional indoor shooting.
Long exposure photography is when we are using a much longer shutter speed, and it’s usually used as a specific technique to achieve a certain effect. Â There’s no defined transition point at which a shutter speed becomes slow enough to define your shooting as ‘long exposure photography’. Â Generally speaking, I tend to think of it as when we are talking about our exposure times in terms of seconds, rather than fractions of a second. Â These kind of long exposure times (shutter speed is the same as exposure time), are often used to blur something in a photo, for example running water in stream, or the movement of stars across the night sky. Â A long exposure helps us to trace the pattern of time and render things in a different way to how we are used to seeing them. Â When we see things differently, it naturally fascinates us and that’s a significant factor in creating a compelling image.
In order to achieve long exposures during the daytime, it’s often necessary to use neutral density filters on a lens, which cuts down the light entering the lens. Â With less light entering the lens, the shutter speed needs to be much longer to achieve the same exposure. Â Neutral density filters can allow you to shoot exposures of several minutes long, even in bright daytime situations.
Additional Reading
- Understanding Shutter Speed
- What Is Bulb Mode?
- What Is A Star Trail?
Long exposures make water silky smooth like in this 5 second exposure.
