What is Long Exposure photography?
What is long exposure photography? Well, actually you will find the answer to the question, Long Exposure it means when your camera capture light for a longer period of time, and give your photograph a perfect Exposure.
Well, you already know when you press the shutter button or basically when you take a photo with a camera or phone it will take the photo in a fraction of a second and it will capture everything or any moving object frozen in that scene. And it happen cause of short Exposure it means your camera don't need long period time to capture a photo it only take fractions of a second.
But in Long Exposure shots your camera will take much longer time than you usually take a shot. It will take 5s, 10s, 15s, is depending what is your situation or scenario. And even sometimes it takes minutes.
So how this Long Exposure or Short Exposure photograph were taken? Well, you can use Shutter speed to take this kind of photograph. When you increase the Shutter speed over 1/30s (0.033333s) you can freeze moving object. And most of the photo is this type of photo you will see on the internet. So, this is for short exposure, then what about long exposure?
As you already know the short is the opposite of long, and this also applies in the photography. You have to do the opposite of short Exposure. In simple words you have slower the Shutter speed. You need to set the shutter speed from 1/4s (0.25s) to as slow as possible depending on the scenario, like 5 second, 10 second, 15 second, and as slow as possible.
What Really Happens in Long Exposure Photo
What really happens is when you set the camera for long exposure, which is basically decreasing shutter speed for like 5 second, now your camera will take 5s to take a photo, means it will keep the shutter open for 5s, and capture everything from moving light, moving subject everything.
There is a catch, if you take a long exposure of a moving subject like a waterfall, river, moving clouds etc, they will become completely blurry. Now what's the reason of this? Well, think shutter is open and the subject is moving from left to right of the sensor, it means the sensor start catching the subject from the left and end in the right. the sensor can not catch the details of the subject, before it capture the details the subject moved already. It's like if you move your head from left to right or right to left and try to see in front of you, you will see blurry. It is exactly the same.
Then what's the point of long Exposure photography if it made photo blurry? Well, you can take some really cool and amazing images with this technique. We will talk about this later.
How to take Long Exposure shot?
So how you will take a long exposure shot? Well, it is very simple, just go to Manual mode on your camera or phone and then select the shutter speed and slow it down, under 1 second or more.
To maintain the Exposure balance maybe, you need to increase or decrease the Aperture or ISO. But if you are on a smartphone, you can not change the Aperture only you can change is the ISO.
How to Check Your Phone Support Long Exposure or Not
So how you will check if your phone supports long exposure or not. Well, it's very simple, what you have to do is to go to your Manual Mode in your phone's camera then select shutter speed. Now, if shutter speed goes under from 1sec to as slow as 30sec then yes your phone Supports Long Exposure. Most of the modern phone Supports it.
What to Do and not to Do
So, how to use this? Well, firstly, you already know in Long Exposure, camera can take long time to get a photo, so, if you want a sharper image put the camera on a tripod or any non shaky place. Cause you don't want a blurry image.
Secondly, do not take long exposure during day time. People usually take a slow shutter speed to get more light in low light situation so if you take long Exposure at day time your photo completely become white, cause there is already enough light to capture a photo. you will never able to recover the images.
So, how to fix this problem? Well, you need to balance the exposer by darkening the image. Cause you can not increase the aperture or if you can maybe that's not enough. So, You need to use an ND (Neural Density) filters, and then use a long exposure.
Thirdly, use a remote to trigger the shutter button, cause when you press the shutter button, then the camera can shake and the image can be blurry. Now, if you don't have a remote you can set the camera on timer for 2s to 3s, then you can press the shutter button.
When to Use Long Exposure?
Now you know how to take a long Exposure shot. But the question is when to take long Exposure shot?
Firstly, Long Exposure means Catching light for a longer period of time. So, if there is low light or it's totally dark, you can use the long Exposure instead of increasing the ISO. So, your shot will have a minimum amount of Noise, but also the view.
Secondly, you can do Astrophotography with long exposure. You have to apply 500 rule to get sharper Image without star trail. But if you want star trail you can slower the shutter speed more like 30 second or 1 minutes to get star trail.
Thirdly, You can capture light trail in the city. So every moving light (Vehicle's head light or back light) will have a trail. Every moving thing will have a light trail or a hallow or blurry, but the non moving thing will be sharper.
Fourthly, you can capture moving water like Stream, River or Ocean wave at the beach. So, you will get a smooth texture from the moving water, So it will feel like the water is moving rather than a frozen photo where every water drop is still.
You also can use to capture your subject in a crowded place. Where your subject will be still but everything around it will have a motion to represent moving life.
Well, a Long Exposure shot is like a normal photo. Just share it normally how you share a regular photo with your friends or family or in social media. Long Exposure is just a technique, it's just a normal photo.
