Some of my long exposure work

namaste_lv · Oct 15, 2009

Very Nice Feel. I love the surreal feel of #3

BWVision · Oct 16, 2009

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated!

How I calculated the exposure? I actually devoted an entire article on my site on how to make a long exposure and how to calculate exposure times.

I'll describe it briefly here, but you can also check out the indepth article...

To me, the ideal type of weather is cloudy with a bit of wind. No sunshine, because that can cause colorcasting on the images. When the sun is behind the clouds, you basically have a big softbox. This means no big contrasts in your image. The bit of wind is necassary to create some movement in the clouds and water.

As for the exposure time... I first meter the light with my camera set to aperture priority and without the ND filter. Now, let's say the camera gives you an exposure of 1/60s. Since I'm using an ND filter that filters the light with 10 stops, I need to go down 10 stops from 1/60s:

0. 1/60s
1. 1/30s
2. 1/15s
3. 1/8s
4. 1/4s
5. 1/2s
6. 1s
7. 2s
8. 4s
9. 8s
10. 15s

So, in theory I would need to use a shutter speed of 15s. However, in reality you want to go down another 2 or 3 stops in shutter speed. This means using a shutter speed of 1 or 2 minutes (or something in between).

After a while you will recognize certain light scenario's and you don't have to calculate anything anymore.