Three Long Exposure Landscape Photography Tips

by Samuel Burns⁽¹⁾
Sydney wedding photography

1. Three's a charm. Yep, we all love a good third leg with it invaluable usefulness and charming demure. And now that we mention it a tripod is just such a three legged beauty. Strong, independent, stable and always willing to lend you a hand, those are the traits of a great tripod, how do you go about finding such a model? Don't rush out and buy the cheapest you can afford, I like to use tripods from Manfrotto or Gitzo and would suggest reading reviews and paying attention to supported weights before throwing your camera on any old thing. A poor quality tripod will not work in keeping your camera stable. Period.

2. ISO, the way to go. So we are about to photograph using low light levels, first things first turn your ISO up, right? WRONG. Digital sensor noise becomes particularly bad during long exposures and the best way to avoid such noise is to shoot with a low ISO. For most circumstances my camera performs best set to 100 ISO so I try to leave it there. Simply lower the shutter speed to obtain a correct exposure, after all, with a good tripod you camera isn't moving anywhere.

3. The density, it is neutral. Ever heard of a neutral density filter? Available in a myriad of strengths and rated by how much light they cut. Essentially ND filters decrease the amount of light hitting your sensor whilst imparting no other changes in color temperature or visual quality. In practise they often change the color temperature slightly however it is nothing that can't be fixed with white balance. Now lets assume we are photographing a waterfall and we wish to render the water as a soft mist. First you would select a low ISO and a small aperture in order to obtain the slowest shutter speed possible, yet the shutter speed may still be faster than you wish. Just pop on an ND filter to slow things down even more and do a little dance. Just because.

Article submitted Thursday, May 19, 2011 & read 29 times.

Samuel Burns is an award winning Sydney wedding photographer combining contemporary photojournalism with quirky flair.

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