Long Exposure: Tell me what you think!

[guadalcanal]

What could I change to make this picture better?
Thanks!

 

[JeremyMcG]

If you shrink your aperture a lot more, you would get starbursts on the static lights instead of fuzzy hair balls...
That appears to be a rather bright location, so you may also want to use an ND8 to increase your available exposure time.

 

[_t_is_me_]

I'm new to all of this, too, and I wouldn't know how to go about doing this exactly, but I think you need a longer exposure to make the lines from the headlights and taillights more continuous.

I do like the lighting/color in the rest of the photo, though. And I agree with JeremyMcG about the starbursts. It's a really cool effect; I actually figured it out on accident!

 

[Nissim]

View attachment 85442
What could I change to make this picture better?
Thanks!

Hi,

In general i do like this picture, i think some red lines from cars is missing, I do love long exposure pictures
This is a picture my wife took of a stream, what do you think ?

 

[MikeFlorendo]

View attachment 85442
What could I change to make this picture better?
Thanks!

What are you camera settings? This will help to know what is going on. Normally to get nice star burst in the lights I shoot at f8. Was it shot in RAW? The more info you post the more we can help-

 

[MikeFlorendo]

I pulled it into Lightroom and saw you you did 5 sec exposure, f4 and iso 100. I would have gone with a longer exposure at f8 or f9 and kept the iso at 100. Maybe 10 seconds but you will have to play with the exposure time to coincide with the lights and the f8 setting. What do you use to post process? Quick 30 second adjustment yielded this - Hope this helps I do a lot of long exposures at night.

 

[ronlane]

I like Mike's edit except for 2 things. 1) it added his watermark and 2) I would consider moving the black slider more to the left to increase the blacks in the sky a little more.

 

[MikeFlorendo]

I like Mike's edit except for 2 things. 1) it added his watermark and 2) I would consider moving the black slider more to the left to increase the blacks in the sky a little more.

Shoot sorry I didn't even see my water mark. That sucks my apologies. It was quick and dirty just so he could get a feel for it. Normally for the sky I would drop a graduated filter to do teh sky but again just a a quick edit. Not something you want to save anyway-

 

[ronlane]

No worries Mike. I figured that you had that turned on in export. I've forgotten to turn it off before too.

 

[MikeFlorendo]

Sorry about that water mark. I have to be more careful when editing other people's photos that is a definite no, no! I dropped that graduated filter in and removed my water mark. The filter I dropped the exposure and upped the clarity. Then reduced the noise. Subtle but Ron

lane was right-

 

[ronlane]

^^^^This, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

 

[dannylightning]

a longer exposure would give you longer more constant light streaks. I am not a fan of the way the light streaks look in that photo.


my favorite one that I have done was 74 second shutter speed, f/22 and iso 100