Ken Rennie
Well-Known Member
In my case I had brought my ND filters but they were wet and my lens cloth was just producing a foggy mess.
I was beside a local river that was deep in a gorge and despite this being summer and the middle of the afternoon it was pretty dim and I could get 0.3s exposure at f16 but I wanted a longer exposure. Many years ago I had experimented with the stacking technique and using mean mode but it hadn't worked very well as I had waited between each exposure so instead of a smooth transition between moving elements there was a gap. This time I took automated bursts of 5 images, this is a standard Sony setting. I could have produce more but 5 images at 0.3s should give me the equivalent of 1.5s and I had already seen that 1.3s gave me a nice effect despite the foggy and blotchy look through the ND filter. The upside of using this technique, no need for an ND filter and the ability to produce long exposures when you can't fit an ND eg ultra wide lenses with no filter thread, no colour casts, slightly higher quality with less glass in the way and lower noise as averaging exposures reduces noise. The downside, 5 times as many files and more time spent in front of a computer.
Here is a single image
This is 0.3s shutter speed I probably should have opened the aperture up and shot it at a faster speed to get crisper detail but it is easy to be smart after the fact.
Here are the 5 images stacked and the average calculated
As you can see it looks like a long'ish exposure but the small falls look soft because 1.5s is too long to show much detail.
Now the clever bit
I merge and mask one of the 0.3 s images into the above stack
I was using a 16mm lens but I wanted a slightly wider image so I produced a pano using the 5 shot technique and here is the final image.
If you haven't seen this technique a quick google found this.
https://www.wardynskiphoto.com/gallery/how-to-simulate-long-exposures-in-photoshop/
Looking at this image the swirls and trails are a little "choppy" so 10 image at 0.15s should even this out. I will make sure that I have plenty of cloths on my next outing and will compare the 2 methods but and an important but I know that if I want to buy a 12 or 14mm ultra-wide and can't use filters then this technique will enable me to produce long exposures and I do like them a lot. Ken
I was beside a local river that was deep in a gorge and despite this being summer and the middle of the afternoon it was pretty dim and I could get 0.3s exposure at f16 but I wanted a longer exposure. Many years ago I had experimented with the stacking technique and using mean mode but it hadn't worked very well as I had waited between each exposure so instead of a smooth transition between moving elements there was a gap. This time I took automated bursts of 5 images, this is a standard Sony setting. I could have produce more but 5 images at 0.3s should give me the equivalent of 1.5s and I had already seen that 1.3s gave me a nice effect despite the foggy and blotchy look through the ND filter. The upside of using this technique, no need for an ND filter and the ability to produce long exposures when you can't fit an ND eg ultra wide lenses with no filter thread, no colour casts, slightly higher quality with less glass in the way and lower noise as averaging exposures reduces noise. The downside, 5 times as many files and more time spent in front of a computer.
Here is a single image
This is 0.3s shutter speed I probably should have opened the aperture up and shot it at a faster speed to get crisper detail but it is easy to be smart after the fact.
Here are the 5 images stacked and the average calculated
As you can see it looks like a long'ish exposure but the small falls look soft because 1.5s is too long to show much detail.
Now the clever bit
I merge and mask one of the 0.3 s images into the above stack
I was using a 16mm lens but I wanted a slightly wider image so I produced a pano using the 5 shot technique and here is the final image.
If you haven't seen this technique a quick google found this.
https://www.wardynskiphoto.com/gallery/how-to-simulate-long-exposures-in-photoshop/
Looking at this image the swirls and trails are a little "choppy" so 10 image at 0.15s should even this out. I will make sure that I have plenty of cloths on my next outing and will compare the 2 methods but and an important but I know that if I want to buy a 12 or 14mm ultra-wide and can't use filters then this technique will enable me to produce long exposures and I do like them a lot. Ken
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