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Sunset Impression II

Sunset Impression II

Another in a short series of long exposures with intentional camera movement made while enjoying a sunset at Seaside Reef in Solana Beach, CA. In the previous post I mentioned that the exposure wasn't 'truly' a long exposure because it was only 0.8s in length. Most of my bona-fide long exposure images are many seconds if not minutes in length so, in that light, these are actually short exposures.

However, when contrasted with one of the general rules of photography...

Shutter speed should be roughly equal to 1/focal length to minimize image blur due to camera movement.

...these images clearly qualify.

The images in this series were made with 70-200mm f2.8L IS/USM lens with a 1.4x extender giving a effective focal length of 280mm. Thus the nearest 'practical' shutter speed to prevent image blur to camera movement should have been about 1/320 second since the image stabilization feature (IS) was disabled.

More on the technique in the next post.

Oceanside South Jetty V

Oceanside South Jetty V

Oceanside South Jetty V

This long exposure (6 minutes) on the South Jetty in Oceanside, CA was one of the last images I made from on top of the jetty on this trip. There was enough light to frame and focus the image with live view. I used aperture priority to determine the average exposure of the scene then attached a Schneider Optics ND3.0, 10-stop neutral density filter to my Canon 16-35 f2.8L II wide angle zoom lens. After calculating the adjusted exposure I triggered the shutter with my cable release and started the timer on my iPhone.

Oceanside South Jetty III

Oceanside South Jetty III

This is a ~4min exposure made without an ND filter. It was pretty dark still and I had a tough time framing the shot because I could barely see the jetty through the viewfinder. I used the electronic level to get the framing almost perfectly level to prevent the need to crop in post so this shot is very nearly full frame.