Long exposures in daylight
So occasionally (and hopefully more often than that), I’ll drop in a little verbage amidst all the photography here. Here is one of those times.
Earlier this week I read an article (1) that was related to doing long exposures in various lighting scenarios. Daylight, evening, etc. With the acquisition of a 5D Mark II, I’m looking forward to also trying new techniques than I had before. Not that they couldn’t have been done before, but I’m definitely wanting to refresh the toolkit and new hardware helps with that.
With help from a local supply shop (2) I got a new 3‑stop ND filter (3) for my Cokin P‑series set, which combined with 2 other polarizers provides 5 stops of extra exposure time. In other words, if you have a normal exposure of 1/60 second then all else equal, with the above setup you would have an exposure of 1/2 seconds (1/60 * 2^5 = 1/2).
So yesterday I grabbed a seriously fast sandwich and went to the fountain downtown by Pack Square (4). It was very bright around 1pm so not great for super-long exposures. However, the following did come out of the session.
13 seconds, f/32 at ISO 50. 100mm f/2.8 USM on 5D Mark 2Granted, shooting at f/32 is not recommended under normal circumstances. But in the interest of a “long as possible” photo I was trying to limit the light as much as possible. Today is looking like another sunny day, but the next time it gets cloudy I look forward to seeing what else can be done. Once I can get into the 2+ minute mark, then things like car movements can start to really blur.
Why do this during the day, when during the evening it is so much easier? Two reasons, one because it’s there (5) and two, because I think that the energy of a space during the day with plenty of people and motion will give different results than waiting until evening when the scene is calmer.
(1) http://www.bulbexposures.com/long-exposure-tutorial-old(2) http://frenchbroadimaging.wordpress.com/
(3) http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/155747-REG/Cokin_CP154_P154_Gray_Neutral_Density.html
(4) http://g.co/maps/bhmfx
(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory