Anywhere from 1 day, to 7 days exposure.

[Life]

The title says it all. I would like to capture up to 7 busy days all in one picture. Surely some of you have heard of Micheal Weasly, who took a almost 3 year long exposure.I am about to buy ND filters. A family members birthday coming up in a month, and I would like to take a 1-7day long exposure as a gift. I know it's possible, and I won't get it right the first time. But I think if I get them now I might just get lucky. My question is, does anyone know how many strong ND filters I would need? And do I need different filters too, or only ND? Anyone who can help on this question, it would be really great, thanks!

 

[sscarmack]

Who is Michael Weasly???? (Runs to google)

 

[astroNikon]

I don'y know anything about multi day exposures
but here's info on ND filters .. see the chart half way down
Neutral density filter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I also would think you would need the absolute best quality ND filters for super long exposures, anything less would cause image quality issues.


My longest shots at night/ND filters is around 30 minutes.

But I would venture to say Micheal Weasly uses a pinhole camera. Similar to stuff I've used to observe the sun.
and probably film .. I think digital cameras sensors start over heating at 20-30 minutes.


but hopefully the experts will chime in

 

[Braineack]

here's the first quote you should read about him:

"German photographer Michael Wesely has spent decades working on techniques for extremely long camera exposures..."


I'm going out on limb here to say you're not doing this on a DSLR.

 

[sscarmack]

I'm sorry, but that website and work......Nevermind.....



Longest exposure I've done was 5 minutes, didn't turn out anything like I thought haha

 

[astroNikon]

Yup .. and experiment of love.
There's alot of information out there if you just search around .... here's a few tidbits
The Longest Photographic Exposures in*History - The Latest - itchy i

It took Michael months and months of experimenting to make sure the negatives weren't going to be over-exposed. He said, if you'd planned to expose for a year you would have to do an exposure of 6 months, and 3 months beforehand and so on. You would have to collect a lot of data and find solutions for a lot of detail problems.

Michael started with pin-hole cameras (1988-1994) but then moved on to use large format cameras (4x5 inches) as these would provide images with a much higher amount of details.

http://www.bonuel.ca/blog/2010/01/06/michael-wesely-pinhole-photography/

I uncovered a whole new field of photography I didn’t really know existed: Pinhole photography. Apparently, you can take photos were you essentially leave the shutter open for 2 to 3 years long (i.e. take the f-stop to ridiculous levels — f1120).

 

[Life]

here's the first quote you should read about him:

"German photographer Michael Wesely has spent decades working on techniques for extremely long camera exposures..."


I'm going out on limb here to say you're not doing this on a DSLR.

I will be going Film AND DSLR. My longest successful long exposure at night has been 2 hours. During day time 3 minutes. That is without any filters. I know the Guy who did the 3 years took him forever and tons of work and so on. And my 1-7 day exposure is very likely to fail. But I still want to give it a go. I know I can do up to ten mins with 1 filter ( via watching various videos ). I was just curious if anyone here who might have done something similar . if I can accomplish this, it will be a huge leap forward for me. If anyone is interested, Benjamin Holthaus | 500px <<--- my photos. I have been learning a lot this last few weeks. As you can see in the quality of the older photos to the new ones. Anyways back on topic. if 1 filter @ f/11 iso 200 = 2 seconds, what would F/32 and 10 filters =? (ND)

@ astro thank you

 

[astroNikon]

I've used pinhole cameras before . and pinhole devices to capture movement on my old film camera but a *long* time ago.
i gave up because I didn't know enough and using film was just a waste of money back then (pre digital) for me.

nowadays I have ND filters up to 3.0 which is a 10x f-stop reduction.
I had a ND 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.8, 3.0
you can also use small apertures, such as f/22 + ND fitlers. I have some photos on my flickr account which show f/22 vs ND filters for water movement.

When you say "1 filter" .. one filter of what ?? ND filters come in a variety of reduction ... see here Neutral density filter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


did you want to stack 10 filters ?

 

[photoguy99]

There are issues with long exposure and digital sensors. Film is actually a lot easier to deal with for this short of thing. Film had reciprocity failure which is a big help here, and digital sensors have heating issues which are a problem.

Rather than a single long exposure, I would take many exposures at intervals over the 7 days, and blend them in post.

But as a starting point, 7 days is about 3 stops more than 1 day.

1 day is about 4 and a half stops more than an hour. An hour is about 11.5 stops more than a second.

Meter during the day, meter in evening, meter at night. Guesstimate an average exposure. Digital should not exhibit reciprocity failure, I think, so you shoot just be able to stack up the stops. I'm pretty sure that your image disintegrates into a pile of note after a while, though.

Good luck!

 

[astroNikon]

here's a good read - about filters in general. And the difference betwen cheap and good filters.
LensRentals.com - Good Times with Bad Filters

 

[Braineack]

Stacking ain't a bad idea. Underexposing a large number of images through the time period, stacked, could result in something similar to what Weasley created on film in one exposure. From what I understand he used an extremely small aperture to reduce the light significantly so only the longest exposed elements really showed up more than a ghost.

 

[Life]

Thanks guys. That's a great idea with stacking. Although I have not yet done stacking, I have been learning and reading up on it. I was going sto art sometime this weeks. So i'll defiantly give that ago. Because than instead of stacking ten filters ( which would be very hard to do without problems because the cheaper the filter, the less quality. Same with macro filters, each time you stack them, every dust particle get more and more and more noticeable, so stacking ND's would cause similar problems) I could take 500 pictures and stack them all into one. Correct? I did not know that sensors heat up. I'm glad you told me that! Because tbh I might just have to reconsider doing 2 hour long exposures even at night.. Thanks for the info guys!

(and yes I have been considering stacking 10 ND's, but they would all need to be of the highest quality). I think even thought my post is scrambled, I have answered any questions of my plans? Also does anyone have more info on stacking? I use photoshop Cs6 and and curious if you know of any way to do it "best" Thanks

 

[limr]

Any exposures that long that I've heard of have all been with pinhole cameras, and I believe Michael Wesely's large format camera may still be a pinhole. I've also heard of people putting filters on pinhole cameras.

Here's an image of a year-long solargraph made with a pinhole camera, no filters: A year long solargraph | I N F I N I T Y????becky ramotowski

You might have better luck here with film than with digital simply because of the reciprocity failure of film. It will allow you to take longer exposures without overexposing the image. What is Reciprocity Failure? | Film Photography Project

For example, here's a picture I took with a pinhole camera. I had ISO 200 film and I metered the scene. It would have taken a one minute exposure at f22. My pinhole camera, however, is f125. That plus the reciprocity failure of the film meant that I needed a 7-hour exposure:


Xmas Tree by limrodrigues, on Flickr


I'd suggest looking more into pinhole photography and starting with exposures of a couple of hours, slowly going to longer and longer exposures until you figure out how to get the results you want. There are also pinhole adapters/caps for digital cameras if you want to experiment with that.

Here's another article about Michael Wesely if you're interested: In Depth Photographer Wesley

 

[astroNikon]

That one article I quoted .. listed f/1120


some interesting calculations here .. briefly looking at it
Depth of Optimum [Archive] - F295

 

[limr]

That one article I quoted .. listed f/1120


some interesting calculations here .. briefly looking at it
Depth of Optimum [Archive] - F295

Yeah, I saw that - it's got to be very difficult to get a hole that small. The smallest needle I have still only gave f168, so to get to f1120, you're probably talking about special equipment.

But yeah, it would definitely get you your long exposures. According to this website: Pinhole Camera Exposure Guide, the exposure at f16 is 2 minutes and 8 seconds. At f1120, it's 5689 hours and 53 minutes. That's 237 days.

Actually, OP, if you ARE interested in pinholes for your exposures, this is a great website: http://www.mrpinhole.com/index.php