Tag: tips

Here are a few quick tips when trying long exposure photography at night or during the day. 

Use a solid tripod. A shaky tripod leads to blurry photos.

Set up the tripod on a solid surface. Solid ground or concrete or similar are best. Beware of setting up in sand or loose soil because the tripod legs can slip and move. Also be careful on bridges…they can shake when cars  or trucks drive by or when people walk by.

If you have a UV filter on the lens you will be using take it off. You can sometimes get unwanted light reflections bouncing around between the filter and the front glass of the lens that can show up in your photos.

Turn off noise reduction. This is optional but I do this when photographing fireworks. If left on it slows down the in camera processing of photos which means waiting to take your next image.

Shoot in RAW. This gives you the best image possible and gives you the most control when editing your photos. Then save your image as a jpg when you want to share or upload your final image.

Use a remote cable to reduce camera shake. If you don’t have a cable release use the self timer available on most cameras. Using the self timer gives the camera time to settle before the shutter action.

Below are are a few examples of long exposure photography. All of these long exposure photos were done without the use of ND (neutral density) filter. I will write about them and that technique of long exposure photography another time.