What's Your Exposure?

I'm thinking about long shutter speeds.  What can a shutter speed do for your creativity?  Think about it.  Any time you want to stop motion or "freeze" action you use a fast shutter speed.  Some cameras can go as low as 1/8000 of a second.  Mine goes to 1/5000.  I remember my first SLR only went to 1/500 and I thought that was pretty fast.  If a fast shutter speed stops motion then a slow or long shutter speed would show the action.  The way a camera shows action by use of a slow shutter speed is with blur.  If you are taking picture of a runner or a waterfall and you use a speed of 1/10 of a second then you will get a picture where the runner or the water is blurred.  Assuming you use a tripod then the rest of the shot will be clear.  More about this type of photography in another post.  Today I am concentrating on holding the shutter open and taking pictures of light, at night or in the dark.  The main thing that people like to shoot in this manner is fireworks.  Almost all cameras today have a "fireworks" mode that turns off the flash and holds the shutter open for a longer time than usual.

Click on any picture for a larger image.

Here is an example. This was shot, hand-held, at about a 10 second exposure.  The key is to hold the camera as still as possible. 

This shot was an accident.  I was going to take a picture of our Christmas tree and meant to set the exposure at 1/20 of a second.  Instead I set it on 20 seconds.  When I realized my mistake, I just held the camera, but my shake caused the light trails from the lights.  My daughter loves this one so much, I gave her a 20 X 30 print of it.

This is our fireplace.  The camera was on a tripod and the exposure was about 10 seconds.  I love the trails that the embers make as they pop out of the fire.

This one was on purpose.  I put the camera on a tripod and using a zoom lens, I opened the shutter and with it open, I simply zoomed from 18 to 270 mm.  It took several tries but I think this is pretty cool.

















Keep trying "crazy" things.  Most phones have apps available that will allow you to do all kinds of effects and most point-and-shoot cameras have a fireworks setting.  Read your manual and try a few things.  Who knows, your "accidents" may turn out to be your best shots yet.


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