Simple and easy-to-operate long exposure gameplay is a must for beginners.

For photographers, long exposure is no stranger. But for many novices, it may be confusing. So what is long exposure? How do novices learn to take long exposure and cool photos?

Long exposure photography works have very strange, magical and surreal visual effects. There is extremely beautiful flowing water and a silky feeling; A starry sky as dazzling as a whirlpool and full of fantasy colors; And this novel and cool light painting. You can also take such dazzling photos, and follow this article study advanced exposure photography!

Long exposure photography works have very strange, magical and surreal visual effects.

There is beautiful flowing water like silk.

Flowing water

There is a starry sky as dazzling as a whirlpool and full of fantasy colors.

starry sky

And this dynamic light track.

Optical orbit

And this novel and cool light painting.

Light painting

You can also take such cool photos, and it's not difficult. Follow this article study Advanced Exposure Photography!

1. Equipment preparation

Long exposure photography, as its name implies, requires long exposure. In order to avoid shaking, a tripod is essential.

Required equipment

The tripod must "stand steady", the camera should be fixed with great strength, and it is best not to be too heavy.

When exposed for a long time, light may enter the lens from the viewfinder, which will affect the shooting effect. If your camera is not equipped with a sun visor, remember to buy one yourself.

Cable release is also necessary. No matter how light the shutter is, the camera will vibrate slightly, which may affect the shooting effect of long exposure.

Adjust settings

Because the shutter time needs to be adjusted to achieve a long exposure effect, shutter priority or manual mode should be used.

Adjust settings

Topics involving lighting need to be shot at night, and the light source is complex. It is recommended to use manual mode to save photos in RAW format for post-processing.

In the process of shooting at night, the camera's autofocus is prone to problems, so choose manual focusing mode.

In particular, it is necessary to turn off the shock-proof function of the lens or camera.

The shockproof function will automatically correct the imaging. If the shockproof function is not turned off in long exposure photography, the system will always work and the final image will be blurred.

The preparatory work has been completed. Let's talk about the most common and creative telephoto theme-understatement.

3. Creative light painting

Set up the camera, adjust the settings, press the shutter, and then draw a pre-designed trajectory in the air with a light source to form a pattern.

The time to finish the pattern should be close to the exposure time, so as to achieve the best shooting effect.

Creativity Guanghua

If you want to draw some complex patterns, you can design them in advance, shoot them many times, and then combine and superimpose a variety of patterns in the later software.

Combined superposition

Light painting exquisitely embodies people's creativity, and even produces a special art school, with many incredibly complicated light painting works.

Light painting works

Amazing light painting works

4. The headlights are flashing.

Choose a road with heavy traffic, find a commanding height with a wide view, and put away the tripod and camera.

If shooting in the wild, you should pay attention to choosing a solid ground to avoid soft soil or dense grass and avoid accidental shaking during shooting.

The shooting distance of traffic flow is long, which requires a large depth of field. It is recommended to choose f/ 16 or even smaller aperture.

Car light streamer

The exposure time depends on the effect you want. The longer the exposure time, the more and longer the light formed by traffic.

Smooth water

Because it is shot during the day, it is best to add a medium gray gradient lens to balance the light difference and keep the details of the light and dark parts as much as possible.

First, find a small stream with slow flow rate and relatively single and stable flow direction to practice. After proficiency, you can try to shoot rivers, even waterfalls and the sea.

Smooth running water

If the environment color is complex, it may be better to remove the color of the picture and eliminate the color difference interference.

6. Clouds are flowing in the sky

Shooting clouds moving in the sky is similar to shooting flowing water, but the difficulty is slightly improved. The difficulty is that the speed and direction of the cloud are very unstable.

You need to try several times, use different shutter speeds, plus a little luck-the speed and direction of the cloud have not changed much, in order to take good photos.

Flying clouds

Adding a large area of still life to the picture can highlight the sense of flow of clouds.

7. The stars are moving.

If you don't mind staying up in the middle of the night, you can try to shoot a swirling starry trajectory.

To do this, you need to choose a good weather where you can see the stars, and then run to the wilderness where all unnatural light works.

The Big Dipper moves from star to star ―― The passage of time

Because the stars move slowly, you need a long exposure time of at least 50 minutes.

The picture above is the result of 50 minutes exposure. Want to be more dazzling? Try longer exposure time.