Shooting long exposures on film is a great deal of fun but also its a bit more challenging .
First of all lets start with what a long exposure is.
When you take a photo there is a small interval of time in which your sensor or film is hit with the light passing trough the lens. This is what you see as shutter speed on most cameras, usually from 1/30 to 1/4000 of a second is where most people take their photos.
The longer the shutter is open (slower the shutter speed) the more light hits the sensor or film and therefore you get a brighter image. Once you go bellow 1/30 moving objects and camera shake become more and more obvious. And that's where the fun starts.
You can get lot slower than 1/30 of a second - like minutes or sometimes even hours or days. That"s when you go in the realm of long exposure photography
Now with that out of the way i wand to share a few shots i did on film using long exposure and maybe give you an idea or two for interesting photo experiments.
On all of the shots in this post i used Kodak ultramax 400 film
The first one is an example of the most basic use of a long exposure.
This is taken in around 2-3 am in the middle of nowhere and the small lightsteeks in the woods are fireworks that someone shot in the nighttime. We were driving around with friends and I stopped the car to take this shot.
To get a sharp photo you need just a tripod in a few attempts maybe to get the exposure you need .
While the camera was set i saw that one of my friends was texting and I tried to capture the light on his face.
I like the fact that he is blurred. This photo has a shorter exposure than the previous one and you can see that the field behind the subject is not as bright but if I had left the exposure longer his face and phone would have been completely white and blown out.
Than we went to a gas station and tried a few shots there.
For this one I was really happy i had Ultramax film loaded because it gave the perfect color to that shot without the need for adjusting anything in post.
Although i said all the shots are on Ultramax i want to share a bonus Black and white photo
This is done by starting the shutter and then following the subject as they walk and then stop the shutter while they are still in the middle of the frame. This is a technique that I should work more with and see what can be achieved.
I would love to see if you've tried something like that and how it turned out so feel free to share your post related to long exposure experiments . Hope you liked the post and also that you are safe and well in the current situation.
Best wisher from Sofia Bulgaria!