Turning off computers to make extra work / lurking silently in the dark with a camera

[hirez]

A thing that I have wanted to muck about with for, oh, all of three weeks, is arbitrarily long exposures. Mostly because of someone else's startling views of the Milky Way, but also because some of the more interesting images I've hauled from the LC-A/XA2 have been the ones where I've held my finger on the button and my breath for thick ends of minutes at a time. However, since taking the wobbly human out of the loop on the LC-A would require butchering a washing machine to get some solenoids out, I've been less than inspired to follow up on the idea.

That is until some rotter at work allowed that you can put all good dSLRs and most crap ones into something called 'bulb mode' and thus hold the shutter open for as long as you like. All you needed was the appropriate remote control. £1.50 and some Amazon later, I had the appropriate remote control, and set about turning off all the auto-everything on the nearest camera. I felt briefly guilty, and the camera did its best to persuade me that I really didn't want to do that and how about a picture of a nice game of chess. Or a picture of some toast. Everyone likes pictures of toast.

Anyway. I beetled outside into the dark between the gales, horizontal rain, lightning and flash (haw!) hailstorms for a brief test:

Comments

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately they don't make shutter remotes for compact cameras, and I can't afford a DSLR. :-(

(I want to take photos of lightning.)

[miss_squiddy]

Photos of lightning is really hard work! Stupid stuff never appears until the image is far too overexposed!

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately mine's a Panasonic Lumix (FH-20) which leaves me out of luck unless I want to form out for a rather clumsy mechanical adapter that straps over the shutter button with a bit of velcro and doesn't offer anything like the control a proper remote would. :-(

Guess I'd better keep hoping for that lottery win to buy a DSLR. :-(

[reddragdiva]

Wait for my dad to get sick of his and Mum to send it over? :-D

[miss_squiddy]

Interesting, thank you. I shall have a proper look later!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Really like that second one. Not using a tripod? That would make for even more atmospheric long exposures.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

IIRC I just propped the camera on the top of the steps leading down into the garden. I've just rescued a small tripod from the bottom of a box. It's just too big to fir comfortably into a pocket and then there's that whole business of finding the hole in the bottom of the camera in the dark and being able to operate a screw thread after several pints.

I like the fact that I can stuff one or other camera in a pocket.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

That's where having a handbag does come in handy for people like me - I can fit a tripod (just!) in the bottom of mine. Though IIRC, don't you have a Barbour? is it one of the ones that has inside pockets - they're pretty roomy. You can also get an Octpus tripod mount which has flexible legs you could wrap around an object in lieu of a larger tripod - it's a dinky little thing you could shove easily in a jacket pocket, even still attached to the camera if you were worried about drunken fumbling in the dark. :-)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Hm. I wonder if a bag of lead shot with a tripod mount would work?

[miss_squiddy]

Yeah, you can get beanbag mounts. They look quite handy! I would link you to the one I saw in the Photojojo store - but handily they seem to have removed the search function from their website.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure I have some shot left over from when I made, er, someone a self-levelling mirror for the consumption of powdered substances under difficult conditions. Probably.

[kathbad]

I have played a bit with longer exposure-using the breath holding method, really like the effects. Would be interested in finding out more about remote options!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I read a thing that alleged that a universal telly remote would trigger a particularly forgiving camera.

The cheap-and-nasty podule I bought seems to be able to drive all modern Nikons, or were I into spending $$ on more Nikon kit, I could have their PC/Mac s/w for driving the camera via the USB.

[miss_squiddy]

Remember to turn on mirror lock before you take the pic - reduces wobble even more.
(I also highly advocate setting things on fire and taking long exposure pics of them - great fun!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss_squiddy/sets/72157626915368980/)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

YES.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I'm so doing this now.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

What can possibly, etc?

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not on The List yet....

[reddragdiva]

My first thought was "/me checks List" ...

[miss_squiddy]

So far we've set ourselves and the vegetation on fire a bit and been interrupted by a helicopter rescue - and also by doggers. But not at the same time. :)

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Best I can get is dropping ISO to 50 and upping EV to the max then use a tripod. It's great for low light levels and minimises graininess.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

What sort of camera do you have? Want some magazines?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That is a splendid offer but we already have a house filled with magazines.

It are a Nikon. D40x.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Oh, and for star trails, with a D-SLR you're better off taking a series of shorter (say, 30-sec) expposures and stacking them, not taking one long exposure, as the D-SLR generates heat so your shots would get all noisy.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Aha. That might be a thing. Although according to the doc, for stupid-long exposures the camera's got enough brains to take a second shot with w/o opening the shutter and then sum the images so (in theory) the sensor noise is removed.

I think I accidentally managed to demonstrate this working by turning off the camera mid noise-reduce. I'll see if I can find the before/after images.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I did some similar stuff in the (streetlight-lit) snow at night last weekend (I would say using a tripod, but actually balancing the camera on a stack of books out the window). The pictures came out very sepia-y... which kind of makes sense, really.

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Rubber band and a bottletop.

I seem to recall that the term 'bulb' came from the early remotes being pneumatic - plastic tube with a a rubber bulb at the end. I might have imaged that though.

As mimmimmim says, long exposures with digital will result in lots of sensor noise - best to take multiple shorter shots and combine them later.