Some Tips Wanted For Shooting Long Exposure

[griffinwalsh]

Hello!

Today I tried doing a few long exposure shots on the beach at sunset. I recently got an ND4 filter and circular polarizer. Attached below are some of the shots I took, and the settings used.

F number: 25
Exposure program: 1
Exposure time: 1.6sec

F number: 25
Exposure program: 4
Exposure time: 4sec

F number: 20
Exposure program: 4
Exposure time: 3.2sec

If there is any other information needed for these photos, please let me know and I'll include it. I really appreciate your critique!

Thanks!

 

[BlackSheep]

Not bad.
I'm not sure what you mean by "exposure program", though. What kind of camera are you using?

 

[griffinwalsh]

Not bad.
I'm not sure what you mean by "exposure program", though. What kind of camera are you using?

I'm using a Canon Rebel t5, "exposure program" is the same thing as exposure composition/AEB. My Mac just says exposure program instead.

 

[HughGuessWho]

All I can suggest is to clean your sensor, or at least remove those buggers.

 

[KmH]

Using tiny lens apertures, like f/25, causes a noticeable loss of focus sharpness because of diffraction.
Diffraction Limited Photography: Pixel Size, Aperture and Airy Disks

The ND filter and the CPL filter, particularly if they are not high quality filters, could be causing a significant loss of focus sharpness too.
FWIW - a CPL pointed directly at the sun provides almost no polarizing effect. The Sun needs to be 90° to the lens focal length axis for a CPL filter to be effective. While directly to the side of the lens focal length the Sun also can't be more than 30° above the side horizon for a CPL filter to be 100% effective.

Use a denser ND filter, no CPL filter, and a lens aperture that is in the heart of the lens aperture range that your lens delivers it's sharpest focus in. That range is likely to be in the lens aperture range of f/5.6 to f/8.

 

[dennybeall]

I would have cropped most of the bottom and part of the right side off of the first one. The colors are pretty. I'm guessing you wanted long exposure to smooth out the water???

 

[DGMPhotography]

What kind of tips are you looking for?

 

[griffinwalsh]

What kind of tips are you looking for?

Hopefully some for the right settings to use (I was just experimenting) as well as getting the water to appear smoother. The sun in all 3 images showed up a lot more smudged or blurred then it actually was, so maybe that would be fixable.

Also, unrelated to the photos I presented I want to try to do some shots of blurring a car's lights, are there any specific settings needed for that type of photo as opposed to this one?

Thanks for all the replies so far.

 

[SquarePeg]

Maybe an obvious question but you are using a tripod yes?

 

[griffinwalsh]

Maybe an obvious question but you are using a tripod yes?

Yeah I am using a tripod.

 

[KmH]

Does your lens have a vibration reduction/image stabilization function?
If so, when using a tripod most lens makers say the VR/IS should be turned off.

Unless you can tell us how much light there is in a scene specific and how fast the cars will be moving settings suggestions can't be made, only general settings.
Your best approach is to experiment and use the rear LCD to evaluate if the settings you used worked, or not.

However, I would suggest that for car light trails you would want a deep depth of field, a shutter speed of at least several seconds, and either pre-focusing or using
hyperfocusing. Auto Focus has trouble working well with a distant point of focus at night.

 

[DGMPhotography]

The water will be smoother the longer your exposure is. Try 5 seconds. To get a sharp sun you may want to try focus stacking. Taking separate photos and then combining them in a focus stacking program like Helicon, or Photoshop.

 

[photo1x1.com]

Griffin, those effects you are looking for are difficult to achieve in bright light. You need a strong ND Filter for that ND4 is far from being strong enough.
But anyway, during daytime or daylight car lights are hard to see.
Try later in the evening or night. And think like this: If you have a road, observe a car and use your stopwatch. How long does it take the car to get from the point you want to start your lighttrails to the point you want them to end. Check what your stopwatch says. That's the shutter speed you are aiming for.

And regarding the washed out sun in your pictures. Cameras are not as good as the human eye when it comes to the so called "dynamic range". They can only capture a certain range of light within one image. Capturing the dark foreground of your scene and the bright sun was too much for your camera, so it chose to expose the water correctly and the sun got washed out. If you capture the sun as a ball, the water would probably be too dark. It also has to do with the sun being behind clouds, that increases this "problem".

 

[Bhoert]

Doing anything long exposure in the day is hard(er), I would try and do it later in the day when the sun isn't so bright or definitely at night for moving car lights. Have you tried anything with shooting night photos of stars at all? I found that was a good way for me to learn how different settings changed my long(ish) exposure images.