There are a few situations where longer exposures are useful. The primary one is low-light situations, as was the case for several of these attempts. You can only open the aperture so far, of course, and cranking up the ISO to get a fast shutter speed also only goes so far before the sensor noise introduced becomes unacceptable. So below a certain light level, long exposure is really the only option, and even prior to that point it's sometimes desirable since it lends a neat effect to nighttime images, especially when there are city lights, stars, nighttime clouds, and/or water involved. Or moving vehicles at night, I love headlight/taillight trails:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/rain0975/6996271119/) (That one is from Indianapolis a few years back, a 20-second exposure. Traffic was lighter than I'd have liked, but I still think it's cool.)
Speaking of water, long exposures have an amazing effect on moving water. When you see shots of piers where the water looks like a soft white fluff, or waterfalls and streams where the water looks like a smooth white sheet--those are long exposures. Like so, which is actually only a 0.2-second exposure:
And lastly, I don't really have a good example of this in my own work, but long exposures can also be used to remove people from scenic shots. Usually in a street scene, for example, the people are generally in motion, so if you can get a nice long exposure, they'll move through the frame quickly enough that they don't register on the image, or do so as a blur. Actually, I do have an example of that which I think is pretty nifty:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/rain0975/6178196108/) That's a 10-second exposure; to fully remove the people I'd have needed probably 30 seconds or more, which would definitely require a tripod. :) But in this case the ghostly effect works well, especially given the setting!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2014-03-05 01:52 pm (UTC)(That one is from Indianapolis a few years back, a 20-second exposure. Traffic was lighter than I'd have liked, but I still think it's cool.)
Speaking of water, long exposures have an amazing effect on moving water. When you see shots of piers where the water looks like a soft white fluff, or waterfalls and streams where the water looks like a smooth white sheet--those are long exposures. Like so, which is actually only a 0.2-second exposure:
This a full second:
And lastly, I don't really have a good example of this in my own work, but long exposures can also be used to remove people from scenic shots. Usually in a street scene, for example, the people are generally in motion, so if you can get a nice long exposure, they'll move through the frame quickly enough that they don't register on the image, or do so as a blur. Actually, I do have an example of that which I think is pretty nifty:
That's a 10-second exposure; to fully remove the people I'd have needed probably 30 seconds or more, which would definitely require a tripod. :) But in this case the ghostly effect works well, especially given the setting!