Details and skills to be paid attention to in slow door shooting

Lead: Usually people call the shutter below 1/30 seconds as the slow door. When the shutter speed is slow enough, the camera can smooth the fluctuation of sea water and even capture the moving stars that we seldom care about. So what details and skills do you need to pay attention to when shooting the slow door?

Details and skills to be paid attention to in slow door shooting, composition and preliminary preparation

There is no need to elaborate on the composition. When a photographer arrives at a scene, he has his own opinion on which angle to shoot. Whether the tripod is placed safely, and the preparations such as cable release and gradient filter installation are the guarantee for the smooth shooting of the slow door. At sunrise and sunset, the light changes obviously, but in slow-door shooting, when using 10 and 6-speed reducer (ND 1000 ND64), the exposure usually lasts for about two minutes, and a slight error in the middle may lead to the whole shooting failure.

Installation and arrangement order of filters during shooting:

If a square filter system is used, pay attention to the installation order of the gradient mirror and the reduction mirror. The reducing mirror is in front, and the gap on the side will cause light leakage. When installing the gradient mirror to balance the light ratio, it is necessary to reserve the position of the gradient mirror.

? Focus and focus lock

High-end decompressors, such as nd64 and ND 1000, will affect the autofocus of the camera because of the low lens transmittance, so focus first and then install the ND filter. To complete focusing in AF mode, you need to switch the focusing mode to MF manual focusing mode. As long as the focus ring on the lens does not rotate, the focal length will not change.

Calculate the slow door shooting time

Before the slow door shooting, you need to take a photo with correct exposure and rich details in the light and dark parts. After using the subtracter, use the parameters of this photo to calculate the correct exposure time.

Light leakage, duration, thermal noise

Light leakage is the only disadvantage of square filter system. Although the lens will be covered with sunscreen cotton, don't forget to turn off the viewfinder when shooting.

Slow door shooting, often with B door. The longer the exposure time, the more noise the camera produces, so how long is it appropriate to control the slow door shooting?

In slow door shooting, there is not much difference between exposure for 2 minutes and exposure for 10 minutes, so I usually control the exposure time to about 2 minutes. When the light is weak, use a low-grade antireflection mirror or increase the sensitivity appropriately to control the shooting time of the slow door. The ratio O 1000 is not a problem for the later noise reduction technology.

This is a picture I took in the slow door for a long time. After more than 7 minutes of exposure, the camera will not only produce a lot of gray noise, but also the color noise will increase geometrically. In this case, it is better to shoot with a slightly higher sensitivity and better noise control.

Stacking or filtering?

In the same plane, taking multiple photos, and later using average superposition can also simulate the effect of slow door. Is it superimposed or filtered? We don't want to bet on a shorter length. I think only by mastering various methods can we cope with the complex shooting environment.

Stack shooting example 1:

Dindar beam in Benxi Qingshi Valley is very beautiful. After shooting with a variable-diameter mirror, the water surface achieved an ideal atomization effect, but the light beam lost a lot.

Then I chose 100 continuous shooting, and used the effect of post-average superposition synthesis. The superposition method not only retains the atomization effect of the water surface, but also does not lose the charming beams in the mountains.

Stack shooting example 2:

After the rain, the clouds in the sky are beautiful. When the cloud moves at a fast speed, the slow door will lose the light and shadow between the buildings on the ground when it is photographed with a variable-diameter mirror, resulting in a lack of stereoscopic effect.

Fix the plane, select continuous shooting mode, and stack 30 sheets on average. Clouds in the sky not only retain the light and shadow on the ground, but also form a dynamic effect. When continuous shooting is superimposed, there should be no space between each photo, otherwise the effect of slow door will become the effect of oil painting strokes. (Just change the camera shutter release mode to continuous shooting. )