Taking a long Exposure Shot

[Hocus Eye.]

From what I have been able to find using search engines his interiors of cinema pictures he took on a 19th Century 10 by 8 inches camera with an aperture of f/64. This would be a plate camera but it may have been adapted to take sheet film. He does not reveal what speed the plate or film was. I only spent a few minutes searching so I think more answers would be available if more time was spent. I had never heard of him but he seems to be an interesting photographer/artist/sculptor with links to Brancusi Man Ray and Duchamp.

Hocus

 

[cybertect]

I probably do nearly half my photography using available light in near darkness.

http://www.cybertects.co.uk/gallery2/v/cars/no-rice/



A few observations

- use a tripod (sorry if this is blindingly obvious)

- Use the self timer to trigger the shutter or invest in a remote release cable. This will help reduce vibration.

- Your 350D will meter exposures to a maximum of 30 seconds. I found with my 300D and more recently purchased 5D that it's still pretty good at getting things fairly close.

- Shoot RAW and post-process with the Canon Digital Photo Professional software that came with your camera. Download v2.1.1 from Canon's site if you don't already have it. Adobe Camera RAW tends to treat colour in a very funky manner with extreme White Points. Reds in particular go quite pink under street lighting.

I've also found some High Dynamic Range processing techniques in Photoshop helpful in some situations where the lighting is quite harsh.

- In urban environments, there's often a great mix of different temperature light sources in a scene. If you can get a grey card reading from the area of the main subject of your image, it's very helpful in post-processing.

- ISO 100 works well for me most of the time. Noise is consequently rarely a problem.

- Avoid exposures under 2-3 seconds on an SLR. The vibration from the movement of the mirror will cause shake in the image. At ISO 100 I'm often getting in the region of 15 secs at f8. If you camera can do mirror lock-up, which leaves a few seconds between the mirror going up and the shutter opening, use that too (it may be a Custom Function on the 350D - my 300D didn't do it).

- If you have pools of greater illumination, use your exposure compensation controls to avoid blown highlights.

- With a crop-factor camera, flare from light sources just out of the frame can be a particular problem as the light falls into the area of the full-frame lens that's not recorded by the sensor and bounces around inside the optics. A lens hood will help to some degree, but watch out for it.

- if you have a separate flash, you can use it off the camera body and run around to 'pop' it, filling in areas of darkness or to highlight parts of the scene. Stopping down or up to increase/decrease the exposure times helps control the relative amount of illumination that this technique will provide.



- There's often a surprising amount of light in the sky even when it looks quite dark.

 

[Ms Ordinary]

From what I have been able to find using search engines ... I only spent a few minutes searching so I think more answers would be available if more time was spent.

You've shamed / inspired me into some somewhat more efficient googling so thank you for replying its all becoming slightly clearer.

 

[jeff_leigh]

bosky
Cheers I'll be sure to try that Black Frame Technique, never heard of that before but i'll give it a go

cybertect
I'll be using a Tripod and self Timer, thought a remote release cable is only used for things like Fireworks or lightning shots

I'm shooting Raw I've Canon Digital Photo Professional on my PC but hardly ever use it prefer using Rawshooter Premium

High Dynamic Range processing techniques in Photoshop whereabouts in Photoshop do I find that? could this help with blown highlights like the sky on a sunny day? I'm still getting used to Adjustment levels and blending modes
anyway cheers and thanks for the tips