How to shoot with long exposure. Short and long exposure in photography. shutter speed parameters for different speeds
Shutter speed is the most understandable and obvious of the three factors that influence exposure and can create the most noticeable effects. If you don't know much about shutter speed, you may end up with blurry or blurry photos. This tutorial will teach you how to choose the right shutter speed for different situations and how to use it to create creative effects.
Step 1 - What is shutter speed in photography?
Without going into unnecessary detail about how the shutter works, shutter speed is the amount of time the shutter opens. If you use a shutter speed longer than a certain one, you will end up with blurry photos in most cases. Shutter speed controls the stops of exposure just like aperture, but much more simply. since the dependence in this case is directly proportional. For example, to reduce the exposure by half, you need to shorten the shutter speed by half, say, from 1/200 to 1/400 of a second.
Step 2 - Motion Blur and Freeze.
Assuming you're not taking blurry photos for creative effect, you'll need to choose a fast enough shutter speed ( high speed shutter) to prevent image blur. Blurring also depends on the focal length of the lens. A telephoto lens requires a faster shutter speed because even the slightest camera movement will be magnified by the lens. A wide-angle lens can handle longer shutter speeds.
Typically, the average person can take a sharp, blur-free photo by setting the shutter speed to the inverse of the focal length. For example, to take a photo at a focal length of 30 mm, you need to set the shutter speed no longer than 1/30 sec. If it is longer. then the likelihood of getting a blurry or blurry image will increase significantly. However, it's worth noting that this applies to a full-frame camera. If the camera sensor is smaller, then the shutter speed should be shortened by the crop factor. For example, for a crop factor of 1.5, the shutter speed will be 1/45 s.
There are exceptions to the rule, for example if the lens has an image stabilization system, which allows you to use much longer shutter speeds. As you learn how to handle your camera and gradually improve your skills, such as how to hold the camera correctly in different situations, you will be able to take sharp photos at longer shutter speeds.
Here's an example of creative motion blur
Freezing
Freezing is much easier to do when shooting. This happens when shooting at a very fast shutter speed (1/500 sec or faster). This shutter speed freezes any movement, and the photo turns out clear, without the slightest blur. Personally, I don’t like to shoot at such fast shutter speeds as the photo will come out flat. Instead, when shooting fast-moving subjects, I try to include a little movement, otherwise the subject will look unnaturally frozen in place. This is shown in the bottom image, the object appears to be suspended in the air.
Step 3 - Correct Shutter Speed for Different Situations
Fast shutter speed for telephoto
Since the photo below was taken with a telephoto lens, it was important to use a fast shutter speed (1/500). If you had a tripod, you could use any shutter speed and cable release to prevent camera vibration. A tripod allows you to hold the camera motionless.
Capture moving subjects in low light conditions.
When you're shooting a subject in low light, such as a concert, the performers are likely to move around the stage. In this case, there is a contradiction between using a fast shutter speed and low light. In this case, you need to use the widest possible aperture and high ISO, which allows you to shoot without moving.
Step 4: Creative Use of Shutter Speed
Creative blur.
By using a remote shutter release and a tripod to hold the camera steady, you can play with the shutter speed and create interesting blurry, out-of-the-box photos.
Adding flash to a blur photo allows you to freeze certain subjects, meaning you can move the camera around for an artistic effect.
Pan
Panning is a technique where you move the camera to follow a moving subject, resulting in the background being blurry and the subject being sharp. This photo was taken from a moving car that was traveling at the same speed as the train.
Drawing with light
To paint with light you need a long shutter speed and a light source. This photo was taken with a 30 second exposure while I was moving and shining the flash on the beach houses. This method is excellent for shooting at night and allows you to add light there. Where would you like to go.
A slow shutter speed combined with the movement of a small constant light source allows you to add a graffiti effect to your image.
Since this photo was taken at night, I used a slow shutter speed and a tripod to get a normal exposure. You can also install the camera on a flat, stationary surface.
This photo required a long exposure, but for a different reason. I had to wait for a passing car to get into the frame, which took quite a long time. It took me about half an hour to find the best camera position and angle before I got the final image.
Good late evening everyone! The other day I was telling my son about the peculiarities of photography at long exposures in night and day conditions, and a bad idea came to mind, as always... In general, I decided to briefly state my thoughts on my blog on LiveJournal. I hope this article finds its reader. Because, even though we are all “best-of-its-minds,” there will probably be those who are just starting to get acquainted with photography. Long exposure photography is very interesting activity, so beginners should try themselves in this.
Dorogomilovsky automobile bridge(Third transport ring, in the Moscow City area)
So, I will outline the basic principles of shooting sequentially.
You need to start setting up your camera by setting the shooting mode. To do this, you need to set the shooting mode switch to either the " manual shooting mode with aperture priority" (Av), or "" (Tv). Now we will look at in which case it is necessary to choose one or another mode from the above.
In most cases, for this type of shooting, you should use the “ manual shooting mode with shutter priority"(Tv), and manually set the exposure time we need. In this mode, you can shoot footage of moving vehicles at night and get multi-colored stripes from headlights, brake lights, side lights, and special vehicle alarms instead of cars on the streets. This mode is also indispensable for night photography of fireworks and salutes. You can shoot various objects in this mode when the presence of people in the frame is not desirable - when long exposure moving silhouettes of people cease to be visible in the picture.
Bell tower of the Znamensky Cathedral and St. Maximus Church on Varvarka
This photo was taken during the passage of a riot police column after an unauthorized rally by opposition leader Navalny. As you can see, not a single car is visible in the picture; only the “tracers” from the lighting equipment on the cars remain. In this case, a shutter speed of about 30 seconds was used.
You can also shoot in this mode during the day, for example, to display in the frame the intensity of water movement in a waterfall, the movement of clouds and ice on a river (that is, to give the picture dynamism) - for this, shutter speeds of about 2-4 seconds are sufficient for a waterfall and up to 15 seconds to add dynamism to the clouds. The second effect that can be achieved with a long exposure during the day is, on the contrary, the elimination of dynamism. This is achieved by even more extreme shutter speeds. The longer the shutter speed, the less detail in the frame. Stormy water turns into haze, calm sea into “asphalt”.
View of the Moscow City complex from the Taras Shevchenko embankment
For daytime photography at long exposures, special darkening filters are required - neutral density (ND) filters. They reduce the amount of light entering the matrix per unit of time without affecting color rendition. The use of these filters is, in general, understandable; at long exposures during the day, the amount of sunlight is such that without such protection all images will be completely lost for processing and “exposed.” As a rule, light filters are designated from ND2 to ND400, where the number after the abbreviation shows how many times the light transmittance of the lens is reduced.
View of the construction of the Center City residential complex from the Shelepikha MCC platform
Now I’ll briefly go through the second mode of shooting at long shutter speeds. " Manual mode Aperture priority shooting"(Av) allows the camera to select the optimal shutter speed values at the aperture value we need - this mode is necessary to obtain a “star” or “ray” effect without using special filters.
So, how should you proceed to get rays from light sources in the frame? Set the aperture value to the maximum, i.e. close the aperture. In this case, the number of resulting rays from each light source in the frame will correspond to the number of aperture blades of your camera. Moreover, with a closed aperture, the image will be sharper; such images have a greater depth of field. But there are 2 big disadvantages. The larger the aperture is closed, the less light enters the matrix per unit of time, and, accordingly, the longer the shutter speed (in our case this is not important). Also, if the aperture is too closed, distortion may appear in the frame. If the ray effect is not needed, then it is better to set the average aperture values (9-14), which will ensure sufficient depth of field.
Vnukovo airport platform
In this photo, a plane passed by in the frame during the 30-second shot. a large number of various airfield service equipment, including those with yellow alarms, which are visible in the photo as intermittent yellow flashes.
It is worth adding that to ensure a ray or star effect, you can use not large aperture values, but so-called “ray” or “star” filters. Naturally, it is advisable to use filters from well-known and market-proven companies with coated glass, otherwise we will get nothing except loss of light and various kinds of optical distortion due to low-quality glass. There are filters for different numbers of rays, but you need to select them based on your own taste.
Dorogomilovsky automobile bridge, removed from the Taras Shevchenko embankment
1. Required disable image stabilization. When shooting on a tripod, it is useless and even harmful. The image stabilization control is located on the outside of the lens if the lens has an image stabilization function. When shooting on a tripod, the stabilizer gives some movement.
2. In the camera menu mirror locking must be enabled. In the menu of Canon EOS cameras, this setting item is usually located in the "Custom Functions" section. The camera, when this function is activated, first raises the mirror (which causes camera vibration for a split second), and only then releases the shutter. This way the flapping of the mirror will not ruin the shot. In this mode, you can also shoot with a frame delay.
Moscow City Complex
3. It wouldn’t hurt to say that Long exposure photography needs to be done on a tripod. If the tripod with the camera installed on it is still light, or there is wind when shooting and the pictures turn out blurry, you need to weigh the tripod down. The center rod of the tripod has either a hook on the bottom or a hole for the hook. Hang any available weight on the hook; the load can be placed, for example, in any plastic bag and hang it on a hook by the handles.
4. If autofocus is not effective during night shooting, you should disable autofocus and focus in
manual, through the viewfinder or "Life view" mode. At the same time, it should be remembered that when shooting at long shutter speeds in the "Life view" mode, when long work screen, the camera's battery charge is actively decreasing.
5. It is advisable to shoot at long shutter speeds at minimum ISO(photosensitivity of the matrix). For shooting, satisfactory values will be 50-100-200, no more. At high ISO values and long shutter speeds, color and light noise appears due to overheating of the sensors on the matrix. At the same time, the so-called “dead pixels” also appear (if you have acquired them on your camera by this point); on the frame they look like white dots that will have to be removed using Photoshop methods.
6.You should change the shooting mode from shooting a single frame to Shooting with frame delay
in 2 seconds after releasing the shutter. This will also limit movement during shooting, as
The camera mechanism will be triggered before shooting, during the shutter release.
Business center "President Plaza" on Kutuzovsky Prospekt
7. An additional means to eliminate hair movement is use of wired and wireless control panels camera. In this case, all the above settings must also be completed.
These are the main points that need to be taken into account and applied when taking long exposure photographs. Well, we must not forget about our brain, it is given to us to collect information, structure it, analyze the data received, draw conclusions and work out algorithms for solving problems.
Read, think, create!
Patriarchal Bridge at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior
At the time of filming with a 30-second shutter speed, about 15 people were moving in both directions in the frame area on the Patriarchal Bridge. As we can see, there is no trace of them.
The use of high-density filters sometimes leads to very undesirable consequences. And today, in this article, we will share with you some tips that can prevent you from experiencing unwanted results.
A few words about filters...
Neutral density filters have a simple but important feature; they block light without leaving color casts in the resulting image. Increasing the density level by one ND level reduces the amount of light entering the camera by 2 times, namely:
ND2 = 21 = 2, has one f-stop and reduces light level to 50%
ND4 = 22 = 2 x 2 = 4 has two f-stops and reduces the light level to 25%
ND8 = 23 = 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 has three f-numbers and reduces the light level to 12.5%
And so on...
A very common filter is ND4; it has two apertures. This filter reduces the amount of light entering the sensor by 4 times. Three f-numbers (“ND8”) reduces the amount of light by a factor of 8, and so on until you reach ten f-numbers, at which point the ND factor is 1024 (2 to the 10th power).
Using these filters will give you beautiful, silky water and a beautiful, slowly receding sky, but you may experience other problems as a result of the reduced light. That is why the shooting process needs to be structured in such a way as to prevent possible troubles.
Dark water, Lake District, UK (ISO100, f/16, 67 sec)
Tip #1: A tripod is considered a basic requirement for many landscape photographers, especially important when shooting with ND, especially if the f-number is 10. Exposure times can last longer than a few minutes, so it is very important that your tripod is very stable and well installed. This can be ensured by placing it on solid ground, so that the wind does not cause the tripod to wobble.
You'll often read online about how people recommend hanging your camera bag on a tripod to add ballast and more stabilization. But, in my opinion, it acts more like a “sail” that picks up the wind and creates rattling, which will lead to even more instability. It is best to use an ordinary bag of uncooked rice as additional weight, which is placed on top of the camera, covering it over its entire surface, creating greater stabilization.
Tip #2: Keeping in mind, if the filter is very tight, you will get enough light that auto focusing may not work. Therefore, it is best to first focus, without a filter, and then carefully attach it to the camera. This way, the lens will already be focused on the subject, and all you have to do is press the shutter button.
Tip #3: It is important to close the viewfinder before starting shooting, or at least cover it with something to ensure accurate light metering (in aperture priority mode, this nuance is very important). The entry of extraneous light can significantly disrupt the future photograph. It’s difficult to say to what extent this is a fair remark, but it’s still better not to risk it, because closing the viewfinder is not so difficult.
Tip #4: For exposures longer than 60 seconds, it is better to set the camera to "BULB" mode. Switching to BULB mode allows you to keep the shutter open for as long as possible, or rather as long as you see fit.
Most likely you will have to use a cable remote control shutter release so you can keep the shutter open for a specified period of time.
In order to determine the time for which the shutter should be opened, you need to know several calculation rules. In some cases, these calculations are trivial (for example, without using a filter, the shutter speed is ¼ , using the ND1024 filter we get SX 0.25 * 1000 = 250s, 250s/60s, we get about 4 minutes), but in other cases the calculations can be more complex, in such cases, it is better not to rely only on your own mathematical abilities, but to use special applications on your phone (such as NDCalc on the Android / IOS platform).
Tip #5: Choose good conditions shooting. The ideal conditions for long shutter speed photography are beautiful, voluminous clouds and strong winds (see Tip 1). Without clouds and without wind, you won't have anything to add movement to your frame. It's best to photograph at sunrise or sunset, either way, the sun is low in the sky, increasing the contrast in the clouds, resulting in beautiful streaking effects in the photo.
Sunrise over the rocks (ISO160, f/13, 50 sec)
Tip #6: Even at low ISO values and very long shutter speeds, noise may appear in some places in your photos. You may not notice it right away when viewing it on a camera display, but when viewing it on a computer, you will be disappointed to find a large number of unwanted red, green or blue pixels.
An effective way to help you avoid noise is to use different shutter speeds at the same ISO value. There are always areas in photographs that are “dangerous” in terms of noise, and in any case you will have them too. Try to take photographs at different shutter speeds so that later, when viewing photos on your computer, you can choose the highest quality and most beautiful pictures.
Tip #7: As you know, filters from some companies may, as a result, leave a slight tint on the final image. For those who shoot in RAW mode, this isn't a bad thing at all, as color casts can be corrected in post-production. Sometimes, especially at long shutter speeds, processing may be simply necessary, and sometimes it is even better to take the photo in black and white.
Long exposure photography is not a new format, but photographs taken with such parameters look quite impressive. And most importantly, if you are a beginner, then it’s easy. All you need in terms of equipment is: camera, tripod, wide angle lens(even a standard 18-55 will do) and an ND filter (neutral filters)
ND filters are designed to diffuse light that enters in front of the lens.
1. Create a gentle movement of water or show where it is moving
One of the most popular uses of long shutter speeds is to smooth out water or make it look frozen. You can shoot such scenes on the sea, lake or rivers. These photographs themselves are more about the sky, rocks and environment.
Another way to shoot water is to set a fairly short shutter speed of 1-3 seconds, this way you will see the movement of the water and, as it were, stop it in the photo. People also love to photograph waterfalls with this effect.
2. Blurry clouds
Architecture is a very popular subject for long exposure photography, this way you can blur the clouds and make your subject seem timeless. With the help of a blurry trail of clouds, you can highlight the main subject of shooting, creating, as it were, guides.
3. Clear the photographed area of people and cars
If you have always wanted to rent interesting place in the city, but people were bothering you, now you can do it using a filter on the lens and a long shutter speed. If there is a small flow of people in this place, then they will definitely be removed from the photo. If there is a lot of traffic of people and cars, it will turn them into ghosts :)
Photo of a street with a shutter speed of 10 minutes
4. One way to photograph popular places differently? than other photographers.
Every city has an iconic place that everyone tries to photograph, and if you have an ND filter and a tripod, then you can take that special photo.
5. Show time in landscape photos.
When do you shoot with long exposures? people think you are photographing time. Look for something special in the landscapes, for example these trees, people may think that you photographed them drying up.
6. Surreal landscape
With long exposures you can create surreal landscapes
7. Night photography
Since you love photography, using a long shutter speed allows you to continue shooting even at night! All you need is to set up your camera correctly and have good support (better, of course, a tripod).
Like these ones simple tips, which will help you try yourself in other genres.
by Thomas Larsen
Many photographers, especially beginners, neglect the possibilities that shutter speed control provides. Most often, the aperture is set, and the shutter speed is used only for compensation in order to obtain a normal exposure. In this short photography tutorial, we'll look at how shutter speed can be used creatively and some of the mistakes photographers make when choosing shutter speed.
You should always know what you are shooting, why you are doing it and what results you can expect.
Five classic camera shutter speeds
1. Freeze motion, or shoot 1/250 s or faster
Using a fast shutter speed helps to get a fairly balanced shot, but makes the photo too static. Any movement in the frame will be frozen. You can fix this by trying to slightly change the camera's tilt to get a more dynamic photo composition. But the best option- use the technique of shooting with wiring, which we will write about later.
The faster the subject moves, the shorter the shutter speed should be. For example:
- fast moving cars or animals: 1/1000 s;
- mountain bikes or running people: 1/500 s;
- waves: 1/250 s.
It should be remembered that individual parts of the object can move very quickly. A striking example of this is a helicopter. The fuselage itself can be frozen at a shutter speed of 1/250, but for the blades even 1/2000 may not be enough. Or, for example, when photographing a girl fluttering her hair in order to freeze the ends of her hair, it is also necessary to use shutter speeds of the order of 1/1000 or even less, while the model itself is moving relatively slowly.
How do you solve the problem of “lubrication”?
You can take a lot of shots, but knowing the laws of physics and the peculiarities of recording frames on a memory card, they do it differently. First, about physics: if you throw a ball up, when will it have the highest speed, and at what point the lowest? That's right - the largest one is when the ball just comes off the hand, and the smallest one is at the point where it stops to fly down, i.e. at the peak of its movement along the top-down flight path.
When filming competitions, where, say, motorcyclists take off on a springboard, the most interesting point is the dive, which is also the “slowest” in terms of movement. Shooting as many frames as possible is not the best approach to solving the problem. At some point, the camera will simply stop to record everything on the flash drive, and at sporting events such a delay can lead to the loss of the best shot.
Use a series of 2-3 frames instead, but while your main subject is at the peak of his or her movement. This approach provides the photographer with optimal chances of receiving best images due to the fact that the camera will have enough time to record the frame onto the memory card without blocking.
2. Shooting with wiring
When shooting with tracking, when using a camera to track the movement of an object, shutter speed plays a very important role. It must be in the range from 1/15 to 1/250 s.
If you have a lot of time, you can make calculations - what shutter speed will be needed to photograph cars moving in a certain area, but in reality everything is a little simpler. If everything in the frame is too blurry, then you need to make the shutter speed shorter.
If the frame freezes the movement of the car, then an increase in exposure time is required. And don’t forget that 1/125 is a longer period of time than 1/250
For example, some quantities that photographers most often use:
- fast moving cars, motorcycles or birds: 1/125 s;
- mountain bikes close to camera: 1/60 sec;
- mountain bikes, animal movement or human work: 1/30 sec.
by Jamey Price 1/60
3. How to use slow shutter speed
It is also called creative blur - 1/15 s to 1 s.
Here it is necessary to make a small technical digression and remind you what a camera is. This is an image capture tool that allows you to somewhat imitate the human eye, the human gaze. But having created this instrument, man began to obtain unusual effects that are difficult to see in life. Our vision conventionally “takes 25 frames” per second in normal lighting, and we are accustomed to seeing the world as we see it. But the camera, due to the fact that it is different, can show us the world differently.
In particular, make a frame overlay () or with a slightly longer shutter speed show the blur of moving objects, turning them into a line.
A similar effect can be observed with your eyes if you quickly turn a flashlight in complete darkness. An eye adapted to darkness will perceive a moving spotlight as a line.
A slow shutter speed is used to photograph, for example, a waterfall. In this case, specialists, of course, use manual settings and , but you can simply set the camera to shutter priority mode (Tv).
by Roland Maria, 3"
Here are some shutter speeds for motion blur:
- fast waterfall: 1/8 s;
- people walking near the shooting point; waves; slow water movement: 1/4 sec.
In bright light conditions (on a sunny day), it may be difficult to obtain the required shutter speed (below 1/8 sec.), even by changing the aperture or using low ISO settings. To reduce the amount of light, use a neutral gray (ND) filter, which is designed for just this. In ours you can find neutral gray filters of variable density, which allow you to reduce the amount of light passing through the lens to almost zero and can even turn a sunny day into night. Well, and of course, when using long exposures, it becomes mandatory to use or.
4. Photography with shutter speed from 1 s to 30 s
There are processes that take a long time, and a shutter speed of up to 1 second is no longer enough. These processes differ not only in time, they differ in perception. At shutter speeds from 1 to 30 seconds, all processes that occur quickly in the frame are erased, leaving only static... soft static. There is a feeling that the world has frozen. The movement disappears again. Only if at shutter speeds of 1/1000 the movement disappears, but a person sees an object that could move, then at a 30 second shutter speed there is no movement left.
This effect can only be achieved if you use a tripod. At the same time, it can no longer be light and portable, but a stable and heavy model is needed, since even a slight wind will affect image acquisition. Photographers often use a simple technique - they hang additional weight on a tripod, and most often this weight in hiking conditions is a working photo backpack. On most tripods you can see a hook at the bottom for hanging the load and, accordingly, giving it greater stability. Additionally, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with some other working techniques -.
Excerpts that photographers use to create photos like this:
- the movement of the wind in the leaves of the trees: 30 s;
- smooth movement of the sea surface: 15 s;
- fast moving clouds: 8 sec;
- waves with some details preserved: 1 s.
If you plan to shoot before sunrise or after sunset, be prepared for the light to change very quickly, so you'll need to change your aperture (or use a faster or slower shutter speed).
5. Shooting at night - shutter speed over 30 s
Shooting at night means there is very little light. Accordingly, many photographers want to increase the value, which most often leads to an increase in noise when individual pixels begin to appear much brighter than others.
If you leave the ISO minimal and just set a long shutter speed, this will lead to some reduction in image noise.
Most often, astrophotographers—that is, people who photograph the starry sky—face such problems. In addition, with long exposures, due to the rotation of the Earth, an effect occurs when the stars line up in a round dance.
In order to avoid this, special equatorial mounts (tripods for telescopes) are used, which allow them to compensate for the movement of the Earth.
For example, to photograph the night sky you might need the following exposure times:
- individual stars or full moon landscapes: 2 min.;
- star tracks: 10 min.
Global bug fixes
Hand trembling
In addition to the fact that the selected shutter speed should depend on the speed of the object and the amount of light, we remind you that the shutter speed is also affected by such a phenomenon as blur from natural hand trembling. The longer the focal length of the lens, the shorter the shutter speed should be. You can roughly calculate it as follows - the focal length in mm corresponds to the shutter speed in fractions of a second. That is, with a 50 mm lens, you can shoot handheld at a shutter speed of at least 1/50 sec without fear of blurring (unless, of course, you are dancing at this time or riding a tour bus), and for 200 mm you will already need 1/200 sec.
Even a simple monopod allows you to increase shutter speed by 1-2 times. The photographer has the opportunity to shoot with longer shutter speeds. Good tripod allows you to take photographs at any shutter speed.
The exposure time is a quality indicator even at . According to the observations of professional portrait photographers, at a shutter speed of 1/50, portraits turn out “alive.” With longer shutter speeds, blur appears, and with shorter shutter speeds, portraits turn out too frozen.
The inability to correctly use the camera shutter speed will lead a novice photographer to stagnation in creative development. There is no need to be afraid to master what is initially difficult to perceive. Ask questions, together we will look for answers from advanced and professional photographers.
