Stewart Baird Photography

Long Exposure Fun

I’ve been having some fun with long exposures using an ND8 filter.   The trick is to take a photo which has movement but also some static, solid objects (like rocks).   It pretty much goes without saying that you need a tripod for making these photographs!  With the camera set on the tripod I focussed manually (making sure the IS was turned-off).  I’ve got a Canon 7D so its handy to use the Live View (LCD) on the back of the body.  Zooming in with the Live View is only zooming in the image on screen, not the actual lens.  This way you can get a very precise focus on your subject.I’m using the camera’s manual setting at this point but you could use Aperture Priority just as well.  To calculate the exposure with the ND filter attached I’m using a free iPhone application called “Long Time”.  You can use this to dial in the shutter time you have set without the ND filter on and then down the bottom you can see how long you’ll need to dial in.

Here’s one I took last night of a stormy beach scene at sunset.

These tools helped me work the magic:

• Adobe Photoshop CS5
• Canon 7D
• Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4

Here is the screen shot from LongTime:

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 10:11 PM. It is filed under Daily Photo, Tips and Tricks and tagged with long exposure, nd, New Zealand, seascape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.