Playing with slow shutter speed

[carylwithay]

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Playing with slow shutter speed and my tri-elamr on my M8. I used a bulb setting and

and just counted.

Caryl

[andit]

Hi Caryl,

 

This is not the easiest type of work to do, and can yield some amazing results. If I may share a bit of experience with you. First and most vital is a good sturdy tripod. Use an aperture setting of f/16. See what the camera suggests in terms of shutter speed. If it is giving you a second or two, then start using neutral density filters. I have at times stacked these filters, cutting up to 5 stops to get longer shutter speeds. One other thing that people tend to forget, use the self timer to start the exposure - you would be surprised how much vibration your finger causes when pressing the shutter release. If using Bulb, try get a cable release.

 

I have attached an image that I took for a client about a year ago (exposure time was about 90 seconds). Long exposures are often overlooked, but give wonderful results. You would use the exact same method to capture lightning - try limit the shutter speed to between 20 and 30 seconds. Setup and point the camera in the direction of the most lightning activity. Very random but amazing results possible.

 

Andreas

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[carylwithay]

Thank you for that info. I do have a sturdy tripod and will try it again. I did not use a tripod here but put the camera on a wall. I had wanted to get the actual car form in it. I find that a slow shutter only works with a dark scene. otherwise it gets too overexposed. I shall experiment.

Caryl

[Marquinius]

Caryl,

 

There's an excellent story about David Duncan photographing a Mercedes 300SL "Gull wing" in a small German town called Sindelfingen. He was asked by Daimler Benz to take official photo's, but ultimately shot only the sweeping movement of the car. Beautiful shots.

 

He states in his book "photo nomad" (have a look, I bought it at Amazons or somesuch) that he needed an engineer to calculate the necessary driving speed iot to move 100 feet during a 1 second exposure. So he planned it the other way around: still, it's NOT easy to achieve good results.

 

Marco

[stuny]

Caryl -

 

Prerhaps a large bean bag on the ledge and the self timer would allow you to get the full car form and still get less camera motion as Andreas points to. Very promising.

[antistatic]

I like number one especially and to me it looks pretty sharp. The print on the banners looks blurred but any wind would do this, tripod or no tripod.

[carylwithay]

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Thank you David and Stuart. I have all the necessary equipment, tripod and cable release and cameras so all I have to do is get it all together and experiment. I shall try at night in the streets of San Francisco. I think I needed a shorter time span on the first one in order to get the car itself.

Caryl

[carylwithay]

I just took this with my panasonic TZ3 and it is just what I was looking for in the motion part. You can see a car and the turn was an extra. A tripod would snap it but I did not take my tripod onto the roof.

Caryl