How does a person achieve this?

johngalway

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79258944&postcount=81

Playing around with the camera my girlfriend bought me for Christmas, was wondering how the above was achieved?

Rew

Long exposure, small apature and probably an ND filter. After that covert to B&W and punch up the contrast a bit.

dirtyghettokid

most definitely an ND filter. more than likely one that does multiple stops.. looks like a 10 stop filter.

cracking image!

johngalway

Sure is a fantastic image. I'm particularly interested in the waves. I presume that's where the long exposure comes in? I don't mean to be tearing the image apart with that, just that I don't know what I'm doing so breaking it down a little helps me understand better

djgaillimh

I'm actually not entirely sure about this one.

I think it might be a HDR in black & white. Multiple shots combined can create a similar effect to a long exposure. The reason I think it's HDR is because I just looked at the full-size image and there's an odd cartoon-ish effect on the coast in the background, and on the rocks in the centre and left centre. Strikes me as a tone-mapped image.

If it is an ND filter it's a relatively short exposure. 15 seconds or less, I'd guess.





Here's a 30 second exposure I did with a 10-stop ND filter (first one I ever did!). John, judging by your username you ought to recognise this place:




So to answer the questions you're probably going to ask next:

HDR is a combination of multiple images of different exposures. It allows you to expose for different areas of a scene (ie a bright sky and a dark foreground) and combine them into one photo.

It's a very, very difficult technique to get right and unless the photographer is a very skilled post-processor, it usually looks tacky and unreal.

Long-exposures are a much easier technique and can produce nice results with a minimum of technical know-how.

Basically you use an ND filter (a piece of dark glass that you attach to your lens) to block a certain percentage of light from reaching your camera's sensor. This means you can keep your shutter open for longer without over-exposing the image. And it allows you to capture cool motion-blur effects (like what you're seeing on the water in your post - waves take on a sort of misty appearance).

I should mention too that it's a completely different technique to HDR. In HDR you're attempting to bring out equal detail in light and dark areas of a scene. Long exposures are used to highlight movement or create abstract images from moving objects (like water).


Check out this long-exposure by Alexey Titarenko:



He just pointed his camera at the steps of a metro station in St. Petersburg and turned a morning commute into this cool ghostly scene.

If you've got a dslr an ND filter is a great thing to have. I got my 10-stop ND filter for 60 quid on Amazon (second-hand). B+W are probably the best brand.

dirtyghettokid

you know, the thought never occurred to me that it could be HDR.....i suppose we need the photographer to let us know exif data for that image isn't saying much!

petercena

djgaillimh wrote: »

I'm actually not entirely sure about this one.

I think it might be a HDR in black & white. Multiple shots combined can create a similar effect to a long exposure. The reason I think it's HDR is because I just looked at the full-size image and there's an odd cartoon-ish effect on the coast in the background, and on the rocks in the centre and left centre. Strikes me as a tone-mapped image.

If it is an ND filter it's a relatively short exposure. 15 seconds or less, I'd guess.





Here's a 30 second exposure I did with a 10-stop ND filter (first one I ever did!). John, judging by your username you ought to recognise this place:




So to answer the questions you're probably going to ask next:

HDR is a combination of multiple images of different exposures. It allows you to expose for different areas of a scene (ie a bright sky and a dark foreground) and combine them into one photo.

It's a very, very difficult technique to get right and unless the photographer is a very skilled post-processor, it usually looks tacky and unreal.

Long-exposures are a much easier technique and can produce nice results with a minimum of technical know-how.

Basically you use an ND filter (a piece of dark glass that you attach to your lens) to block a certain percentage of light from reaching your camera's sensor. This means you can keep your shutter open for longer without over-exposing the image. And it allows you to capture cool motion-blur effects (like what you're seeing on the water in your post - waves take on a sort of misty appearance).

I should mention too that it's a completely different technique to HDR. In HDR you're attempting to bring out equal detail in light and dark areas of a scene. Long exposures are used to highlight movement or create abstract images from moving objects (like water).


Check out this long-exposure by Alexey Titarenko:



He just pointed his camera at the steps of a metro station in St. Petersburg and turned a morning commute into this cool ghostly scene.

If you've got a dslr an ND filter is a great thing to have. I got my 10-stop ND filter for 60 quid on Amazon (second-hand). B+W are probably the best brand.

Amazing, if these photographs are really real. I mean your photo graphs are looking finished by and photo editing software. I want to know these photographs are edited or natural?

kelly1

I'm not too sure about the HDR theory. Looks to me like a grad filter was used and maybe/probably an ND.

Let's see, 4 stop, Lee glass, 30s exposure, f/20. OK, I'm getting carried away now!

11811

Hi guys, that was taken using a ND filter alright. Think it's a 9 stop, quite a big one anyway! I also used a grad filter as the sky was too bright at the time.
Think the camera was set to about a 15 sec exposure and f11. Not 100 percent on that now, but I'll check when I can.

No HDR used, but I converted the image using silver FX and also used some noise reduction which smoothed the image out quite a bit, and may have lead to the "cartoonish" quality mentioned. To be honest there was quite a bit of experimentation! I'm still learning when it comes to post processing.

So to sum up I guess to start getting similar images you need to get your hands on ND filter to allow you use longer exposures. Oh a decent tripod as well will help greatly.

Just checked, was 5 seconds exposure at f11.

djgaillimh

Aw, I thought I was being very clever with my HDR theory.

At least I got the less-than-15-seconds exposure correct.

petercena wrote: »

Amazing, if these photographs are really real. I mean your photo graphs are looking finished by and photo editing software. I want to know these photographs are edited or natural?

For the first photo I think I boosted the contrast by about ten points and lowered the exposure of the sky in Lightroom (it was burnt out due to the long exposure time).

The second photo isn't mine! But it pre-dates Photoshop and digital editing software.

Cropping, colour, contrast and exposure are the only edits I ever make.

dcukhunter

You could also try using some welding glass in front of the lens. You can get it in most hardware shops for 1 or 2 euro. Here is my first attempts with it.

Shad0r

djgaillimh wrote: »

Check out this long-exposure by Alexey Titarenko:



He just pointed his camera at the steps of a metro station in St. Petersburg and turned a morning commute into this cool ghostly scene.

If you've got a dslr an ND filter is a great thing to have. I got my 10-stop ND filter for 60 quid on Amazon (second-hand). B+W are probably the best brand.

That's flippin class...

Loire

Shad0r wrote: »

That's flippin class...

+1. Amazing that nobody walked down the steps (on the near side of the railing) during that time.

djgaillimh

It is amazing.

He has a whole series called 'City of Shadows' taken in St. Petersburg shortly after the fall of the USSR.

It's really brilliant stuff.


There are galleries on his website:

http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/

Gregor Samsa

djgaillimh wrote: »

But it pre-dates Photoshop and digital editing software.

<pedantry>Titarenko's photo was taken in 1993. Photoshop 1.0 was officially released in 1990, and its precursor "Barneyscan XP" was commercially available in 1989.</pedantry> (not that I'm saying it was digitally manipulated)

It's a fantastic photo that I hadn't heard of before, thanks for sharing it.

djgaillimh

phutyle wrote: »

<pedantry>Titarenko's photo was taken in 1993. Photoshop 1.0 was officially released in 1990, and its precursor "Barneyscan XP" was commercially available in 1989.</pedantry> (not that I'm saying it was digitally manipulated)

Really?

Wow, didn't know that.

Gregor Samsa

djgaillimh wrote: »

Really?

Wow, didn't know that.

Yeah, I first used Photoshop in 1994 when I was studying in NCAD (Version 2.5). It didn't even have layers back then (they were introduced in 3.0), but it was still awesome. I was instantly hooked.

alb

To appreciate the effects in these long exposure shots and understand why they look the way they do you have to think about a common misconception about photography:

Photographs don't capture a discrete moment in time, they capture what's in front of the lens for a period of time. The period of time is usually so short that nothing moves during that time so it appears to be single moment. But when the time period is longer and things are moving you get the average of all these moments together, almost as if many regular photos were taken and then blended together.

If a photo has an exposure of 10 seconds and you were in the frame for 5 of those seconds, are you in the photo or not in the photo? People often ask is a photo real or not, usually meaning would they have seen the same thing if they were there at the time. When motion within the frame is involved the photo will tend to move away from what the eye would see as shutter speeds reach either extremes of short or long speeds.