Very long exposures -- daytime

[Kin Lau]

I had that idea once. I saw in a photo mag some dreamy ocean shots where the long exposure made the waves look sort of like a fog. Very mysterious looking. Anyway, I used my LX Pentax, which meters off the film, and a stack of nd filters. The view through the viewfinder was almost black, yet the exposure times were not that long. Several seconds. Developed, the film was properly exposed but the grain was horrific, and the waves still looked like waves. I have no idea how this guy achieved the effect. All that he said was "a long exposure".

On the prints it looked okay, but it was probably under exposed. Once you're over 1 sec, exposure takes 2x as long most of the time. On colour negative film, you can get away with overexposure, so go for 4x. Oh... and do this near the dusk or dawn with 100iso or slower film. You'll easily hit a multi-second exposure at f16 or f22 + a couple of ND's. If you want a "misty" sea, then 20 secs or longer is needed.

 

[Rico]

Sorry i have a question here. Suppose i metered the scene and it's f/4 at 1/250 and i put on a ND4, what then should my settings be? Does the 4 mean slower by 4 stops?

The meaning of ND4 may depend on manufacturer. For B+W, it indicates a residue of 1/10000, or a light loss of 13 f-stops! As noted by jlw, it is a base-10 logarithmic measure. Here is a description of ND filters from the B+W 1997 catalog: http://patternassociates.com/rico/photo/misc/B+Wnd.jpg

 

[lubitel]

Thats how i came to the idea too. I saw some amazing dreamy landscapes. I wonder what a city would look like. BTW have you heard about this german fotographer making city scapes with exposures of between 3 months and 2 years!? They are quite interesting. forgot his name as always. Now that must be some kind of filter!

 

[Rico]

Those powers of ten add up: two stacked B+W ND6 filters yield ND12. An exposure of 1/125s becomes 250 years. Reciprocity failure must be staggering!

 

[andrew]

No technical advice to add, but a few images for inspiration

No technical advice to add, but a few images for inspiration

I just saw this thread and remembered two photographers (one mentioned in an earlier post).

The first is Tokihiro Sato - his book "Breathing Light" is pretty amazing and I've heard he walks, and occassionally swims, around with a little mirror to bounce sunlight back at the lens. In some shots he's climbing trees or in the middle of the city and you can just see the slightest indications of other people. His night/interior work is done with a series of broad strokes with a small LCD or mini-mag type flashlight with just the bulb exposed. I think it's pretty amazing, but that's just one opinion. Here's a link:

http://photoarts.com/gallery/SATO/satoexh.html

The second photographer, Michael Wesely, is the German mentioned earlier. He photographed the new MOMA building as it was built with a series of 5x7 cameras and glass plates (ASA 2 or so, if I remember correctly). His exposures in this case were 39 months long and you can see inside the building and outside at once in the image published in Wired. Here's a link to the Wired article:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/play.html?pg=8

Here's a link to his website (it's in German). I remember some images of tullips taken over a week long where you can see the withering and wilting - some interesting stuff, too:

http://www.wesely.org/

I teach high school photography and two years ago one of my students made his own tributes to Sato in his kitchen and basement (the best shot featured 2 foot tall flames of light shooting up from his parent's electric stove top range). Another who did an independent study building his own cameras made lots of pinholes and, rather crudely but effectively, stacked sheets of ND filter samples (the kind you used to be able to get for free from B&H by asking for a lighting gel sample kit) in front (more successful) and behind the lens of a frankenstein-esque medium format camera.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope somebody likes some of the work, and I'm eager to see the long exposures that come out of this thread.

 

[lubitel]

there are some amazing photographs. thanks. very inspiring.