Long exposure while traveling. In this article you will find out how to use longer shutter speeds sensibly and which technique you can use.

Subjects for your photographs

Longtime exposure is commonly used in landscape-photography. Therefore you use the movement of the water, the clouds or both in one motif. Quite often landscapes with waterfalls are also good motifs. When you combine these together with stones, cliffs, houses etc. you will get outstanding compositions.

Beach

One of the most beautiful pictures are shot on beaches. A single stone or coral at sunset with the right exposure time can often lead to a very beautiful result.

Where do I find the right motifs for longtime-exposure?

You can find the most beautiful beaches and waterfalls in tropical regions and countries, whereas seas with jetties or lighthouses are also common places to take longtime exposures. On beaches, firstly, you experience a different sunset every day. Secondly, most of the time it’s less windy in comparison to other beaches in Europe, e.g. in the south of Spain. In landlocked countries, waterfalls are often found in mountainous regions. With the help of Flickr or 500px you can find motifs that have already been photographed by other photographers. If you enter the word “beach” or “longtime-exposure” in these photo communities, relevant images are displayed first. If you click on these pictures, the exact locations where the photo was taken are displayed on a map below in the description. Now you’re asking yourself: Why should I re-produce a photo that has already been taken thousands of times at a certain location? I’m telling you, there are the following reasons why your subject will definitely not look like any of the other photographers:

Weather

The weather is a major influencing factor on the motif. It describes the mood of your subject, creates certain colors and contrasts. If rain is announced in the weather forecast, it doesn’t mean that you should leave your camera at home so that it doesn’t get damaged by the water – but that’s exactly when you have a chance of an exciting mood in the picture you create!

Daytime

Image effects also depend on the time of day. As in portrait photography and in many other areas of photography, it is not particularly exciting to take pictures during lunchtime. You should also keep this in mind when doing a long exposure. Backlit shots are very exciting in a long exposure. Therefore, before driving to a certain beach, it is advisable to make sure that there is a real sunset/rise on this beach at all. Also, shots taken just after sunset, for example, produce interesting colors (such as yellows or pinks) that are not seen that often. Tip: With the help of the Sunsurveyor app, you can always determine the exact position of the sun so that you don’t miss the corresponding backlight situation.

Exposure time

The shutter speed is the deciding factor of a long exposure. You can see in the images to the side what effect different shutter speeds have on the subject. In the next section, I will tell you which tools you use to get the right exposure.

Technique

The camera

If you want to shoot really slow shutter speeds, cameras with low noise performance are recommended. Because the longer you expose, the more the sensor heats up. These are usually cameras with larger sensors or better light sensitivity. However, to create a proper image, this is not the most important element. Much more important is…

The lens

The tripod

The absolute “must have” to be able to make long exposures is a tripod. Tripods that weigh no more than 1.5 kilos are particularly suitable for travel. I even recommend the most compact and lightest possible tripods, but with extendable segments to be able to set the height as you like. There is now a huge range of travel tripods on display in camera shops to give you a better idea of ​​weight and size.

Neutral Density Filter (ND Filter)

You should not forget to use a neutral density filter (ND filter) or gray filter if you set particularly long shutter speeds. Of course, these must fit the respective lens (diameter of the lens) and have certain strengths. If you photograph with a wide-angle lens, do not use vario filters (variably adjustable filters), as these usually produce unsightly brightness/dark artefacts or vignetting. There are tables with corresponding strengths (usually given in f-stops) that give you information about the strength of filter you need. Of course, you don’t need every filter of different strength for every lens. On my entire photo tour in Thailand I always got by with 2 different strengths and I fulfilled my purpose with them: ND1000 and ND64.

Remote Control

Many cameras can now be connected via WiFi or Bluetooth using an app in order to be able to take a picture remotely. If you have an older generation camera that does not yet support this, I would recommend a remote shutter release. A short cable is all you need to attach it to the camera, since it’s not about photographing yourself (sorry, selfies with long exposures won’t work), you want to release the camera without blurring, or the “Bulb mode” enable. With some cameras, the bulb mode is already integrated in the camera, so a remote trigger is now obsolete. If you want to release the camera without blurring, set it to a 2-second self-timer.

Clean your equipment!

The motifs become ugly if you do not take proper care of your equipment. I basically use a microfiber cloth very often for cleaning to get the dirt off of every lens and filter. There are other methods to remove dirt as well, such as blowers or wet disposable cleaning wipes. You should also clean the back of the lens, because if dirt sticks to this side, it will be all the more noticeable when you take the picture.

Settings

Now that you have everything you need with you, the next step is of course to set the camera correctly. In principle, you can work with semi-automatic (shutter speed or aperture priority). However, if you want to correctly expose what is essential for the image effect, the manual mode is recommended. Working with filters, such as the ND1000 filter, allows for almost no automatic settings.

In landscape photography, it is not absolutely necessary to capture motifs at exactly the right time, as would be the case in sports or event photography, for example. For most situations you have enough time to set everything up manually. But before the sun disappears behind the horizon, you should already have found your subject and aligned the camera with the tripod firmly and securely. It is best to store your filters within easy reach.

Aperture

It is best to set the aperture the way you would set it for landscape photos. For people who want to work very precisely, there is the so-called hyperfocal distance that can be calculated. However, since you want to focus on the shutter speed with the long exposure, it is better not to set exact apertures for all shots, but rather to set a range of f8-16.

Exposure time (Setup)

The shutter speed is THE setting you can play around with on a long exposure. So once you have set your aperture, etc., you can try to take several shots of the same part of the picture and always change the shutter speed. Of course you have to adjust your aperture and ISO settings so that the exposure is right.

Filter

You’ll soon find that increasing your shutter speed will quickly overexpose. And now we come to the question: But what if I want the water to look “milky” and/or the clouds to look softer, without overexposure? Yes, that’s exactly when the ND or neutral density filter is necessary, as already mentioned. If your light balance shows you that you have correctly exposed and you now want to expose this subject longer, then you screw the right ND filter onto your lens. You can use a table to determine which filter is the right one (see image).