Long Exposure Photography is a great way to be creative and make something unique with your camera, whether it be with a giant DSLR or your pocketable Smartphone. If you have never taken a long exposure photo in your life, you came to the right place. Read the how-to basics below.
What is Long Exposure Photography?
When you click a pic with your phone or camera, the shutter opens and closes, capturing the scene on to the sensor, thereby recording a 'Picture'. When there is a lot of light, this opening and closing of the shutter would be instant. Long Exposure photography is a way of taking a picture by letting the shutter open for longer periods of time - mostly seconds - and let the sensor capture everything that's happening in the scene during the time it is exposed. Those light trail shots and light painting shots you saw online are created by using this technique.
What's the Ideal scenario to take Long Exposure or Slow Shutter photos?
Let's assume you are trying to take a long exposure shot in the middle of the day. It is guaranteed you would end up with a completely white image with zero details. This is because, by opening the shutter for longer periods of time, you let in more light than the sensor needed to record the scene. Photographers call it an overexposed image. So, in order to take such pictures, you would need less light. Pro photographers often use ND Filters that they screw it on to the lens to cut down the light to create such shots. Since it's hard to use an ND filter on a smartphone, Sunset hours or before Sunrise hours are ideal times to try this sort of photography using a smartphone.
What tools do you need to take such photos?
What is Long Exposure Photography?
When you click a pic with your phone or camera, the shutter opens and closes, capturing the scene on to the sensor, thereby recording a 'Picture'. When there is a lot of light, this opening and closing of the shutter would be instant. Long Exposure photography is a way of taking a picture by letting the shutter open for longer periods of time - mostly seconds - and let the sensor capture everything that's happening in the scene during the time it is exposed. Those light trail shots and light painting shots you saw online are created by using this technique.
What's the Ideal scenario to take Long Exposure or Slow Shutter photos?
Let's assume you are trying to take a long exposure shot in the middle of the day. It is guaranteed you would end up with a completely white image with zero details. This is because, by opening the shutter for longer periods of time, you let in more light than the sensor needed to record the scene. Photographers call it an overexposed image. So, in order to take such pictures, you would need less light. Pro photographers often use ND Filters that they screw it on to the lens to cut down the light to create such shots. Since it's hard to use an ND filter on a smartphone, Sunset hours or before Sunrise hours are ideal times to try this sort of photography using a smartphone.
What tools do you need to take such photos?
- A tripod - get those smaller, foldable, tailor-made for phones that come with a holder. Any tiny movement of the phone during the long exposure would cause blur in the image, ruining the shot. So this is a must.
- A Manual Camera app or Pro mode - by default if you try to take a photo at night, your phone wouldn't do a long exposure shot. It instead, boosts up the iso and take a shot, giving you a noisy, less detailed, bad image. Using Pro mode, and the phone placed on the tripod, we can enter our desired settings.
What Camera Settings should you use to take good Long Exposure Photos?
This depends on the amount of Light you have when you are attempting the shot. Nobody nails a long exposure shot in the first attempt. Photographers tend to try various slow shutter speeds to get the best possible shot.
Let's say you are at the Beach, and the sun has just gone down the horizon, behind the Pier. It's getting darker, but the colors are fabulous. You have set up your phone ( Samsung Android or Apple iPhone - doesn't matter ) on the tripod and ready to capture a lovely shot bringing out all the colors as well as make the water go Silky. What settings should you use?
- Open the Pro mode in your Camera app.
- Set the ISO to the lowest possible on your phone ( ISO 50 in my case )
- Select the RAW + Jpeg option if it's available on your smartphone. RAW files look dull and less colorful, are bigger in size as well, but they hold full data of the scene recorded which can be edited to bring out colors and details using a software like Lightroom mobile. It's recommended to shoot RAW ( Dng ) if you plan to edit your files.
- Set the shutter speed on your Camera app to 1sec
- Tap on the screen to let the phone focus an area you like
- If your camera has a self-timer mode in the settings, set it to 2 secs and then click the shutter. This is to avoid any blur caused when you press the shutter.
- Check the shot you just took and see if it's too bright or too dark.
- If it's too dark, lower the shutter speed to 2 secs or 3 secs, and repeat the steps again until you have got a good image with good detail in the skies and shadows.
- Keep experimenting with the shutter speed. If it's too dark, increase the iso a bit. I wouldn't recommend increasing it above ISO400 on a smartphone as it would decrease the quality of the image making it noisy.
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