This was my 1st attempt at extended exposure photography. I took these on a busy overpass while hanging on for dear life! All were shot at F32 on a Nikon D750 and I will detail the exposure time below for each one. I used a remote to avoid touching the camera and cause unnecessary vibration. These were shot raw (mistakenly instead of JPG) and I used a free NEF to JPG conversion program then ran them through an old version of Microsoft Picture It Plus! I know they are a bit blurred as the camera moved from the bridge vibration. If you have any solutions to that let me know but I want to get that critique off the table. Also I know that the processing software sucks but the wife wont let me spend any more money on this hobby (grrrr) but if you know of any great free (not cheap) processing software out there I would love to hear it. Thanks in advance for your advice/criticism.

1. 30 Seconds


2. 25 Seconds


3. 20 Seconds


4. 15 Seconds


5. 13 Seconds

For free software, try GIMP! It's supposed to be almost as good as Photoshop, but can be a bit confusing to learn at first. It's open source.

The 25 second exposure is the best. These are really cool! By only critique (aside from the slight motion blur) is, it would be nice if there were more to the photo than just the road. Like some buildings or visible landscape or something. But that's obviously not always easy to fix, and I get the impression that the point here was to get practice with long exposures, which I think you've done a great job of here!

Oh, and if you're using an SLR, see if it has a "mirror lockup" feature hidden somewhere in its menus. This makes the viewfinder mirror move and lock a few seconds before the shutter opens, which can help reduce that as a source of vibration. Of course if it really is the bridge itself that won't help much. But it's something to try.

Thanks for the feedback. The subject matter (a road...) is fairly boring. I live in West Houston and since I really had no clue what I was doing, I didnt want to head into town and mess with traffic so I chose a relatively low traveled overpass to try this out. I'm thinking tonight about going back out maybe a few exits down and shooting in a different location but JUST before nightfall so I can get the sunset in the shot too.

Rooftops vibrate a lot less.

That said, I actually really enjoy the waviness of the lights from cars. I don't think I've ever seen it rendered so clearly. I would really hesitate to call these photos UE, but they are cool.

Also, if you're getting into all these manual settings, bulb is best, because you can let all that light burn away at your sensor for as long as you like before ending the exposure.

I tried bulb but it was an over-exposed mess. You think the lights from the oncoming traffic affected it?

Get a hang of how ISO, exposure time and aperture corresponds.

Increasing the ISO increases noise, but decreases exposure time.

Upping f stop increases the range of distance that is in focus, but increases exposure time.

An f-stop of 32 is extreme and will force you into having to use a higher ISO (usually that's bad) or a much longer exposure. You could easily get away with f22 or f16 shooting this subject matter.

Posted by General Zod An f-stop of 32 is extreme and will force you into having to use a higher ISO (usually that's bad) or a much longer exposure. You could easily get away with f22 or f16 shooting this subject matter.

I was thinking the same thing. Not sure what the focal length was, but even at f/8-f/10 you should have plenty depth of field. And it would allow a shorter 2-5 second exposure time. That might help eliminate some of the shake.

Posted by WhiskeyPapa I was thinking the same thing. Not sure what the focal length was, but even at f/8-f/10 you should have plenty depth of field. And it would allow a shorter 2-5 second exposure time. That might help eliminate some of the shake.

True. When unavoidable vibration is present, a technique to use is prioritizing ISO and Aperture in order to cut down on exposure time. In combination with that, you can then take multiple exposures, and afterwards start to fuse the exposures together when you see where there is less noticeable shake/ blur in the images.

By the way, out of all five of these, the only one that actually looks "great" to me is the first one. The others are average, and in comparison to the first image, they become disposable.

Don't really have anything helpful to say but the way the lights wave around look like it's a picture of a reflection