Long exposure lighting

Ghoste · May 6, 2005

I'm allways seeing great long exposure shots and wishing to do them myself. But I need some help with that. If I have the shutter open for like 5 seconds, how do I know how much lighting will burn out the picture and how much won't be enough?

What are the settings on photos like these usually?

Photos: Scott Pommier

Big Mike · May 6, 2005

I would say that those are longer than 10 seconds. Some night shots are much longer that that...10-20 minutes.

After a second, you can run into reciprocity failure...which means that the relationship between shutter speed and aperture are not constant. You pretty much have to experiment. Lower ISO film, like 100, can actually be more sensitive on long exposures than higher ISO film.

I think a lot of digital cameras show a lot of noise on longer exposures so using film would be good...but you have to experiment and keep track of your settings so that you know what works..and how the particular film behaves.

There are some people on here who know this stuff really well. Maybe they will chime in here.