Understanding Manual/Pro Photography for Taking Long Exposure Shots

Hi everyone, How're things going?

I’m sharing sth that I’ve learned over the past few years. Maybe it could be familiar to some of the people in the community but I hope it could be helpful to the one who is new to this.

Talking about myself, I rarely do take long exposure/slow shutter shots in manual mode. And not even the normal long exposure shots with auto camera settings. I do love long exposure photography. But I dunno why I don't take much...Haha

So diving into the main topic, taking long exposure photos in pro mode requires a bit more understanding than normal pro photography. Pro photography itself is not easier but in this case, you have to react following the photography subject. Every time same settings won’t be useful.  So the first thing you need to know is fluent understanding with the terms such as ISO, S, EV

This is how the pro mode settings of the HONOR phone looks like (Could vary depending upon software versions)

I really didn’t know what ISO stands for.  But while writing this article, I gotta learn that it didn’t have full form at all.

ISO - ISO simply refers to the camera’s sensitivity to light. The greater ISO value is generally useful for taking photos under low light conditions. The more you’re gonna increase the value the more grainy pictures you’re gonna get. Having said that, ISO value alone is not just enough as you’ll be needing to adjust other settings as well. Most of the time while I take photos (especially in daylight condition) I try to keep the ISO value to the lowest point (i.e 50) on my HONOR Play. The lowest value available could depend upon the phone model.

EV - EV refers to Exposure value. Setting the higher EV results to overexposed photos and in reverse setting the lower EV results to underexposed photos. It's better to leave the exposure value the way it is. But it really depends upon your photography subject whether it needs a high exposure or low exposure. Like I said in earlier posts, it still is way better to have an underexposed photo than the overexposed one as you can gradually make changes during the post-production.

S -  So the next we have is the shutter speed (which is one of the main settings to look out for while taking long exposure photos) It's all about how long you wanna have your camera shutter open. You don't need to think too much about the shutter speed if you wanna capture normal photos. But yeah, when it comes to the long expo photography, it is crucial.

So these 3 manual photography settings are essential for slow shutter photography. There's more to pro photography than just ISO, EV, and SS like metering, white balance, and focus settings. But I don't wanna go deep down into these as it’s not that important for this article.

You can try long exposure photography for capturing water flows, star trails, thunderstorms(a bit risky), light painting, night photography, and even for the clouds to give that nice effect to daylight nature photography. Also, you can experiment with this mode with pretty much everything if you wanna up your photography game. You just need to have that passion inside. :)

Water Flow Shots

Silky water shots are actually my favorite among other long exposure variants. The first thing you need to make sure of — is that you set up your ISO value to the lowest point possible depending upon how long you need to keep your camera shutter open. The main idea here is that you’ve to keep your camera shutter open for a longer period compared to normal shots. So when you keep your  ISO value higher, a fair amount of light is passed onto your camera sensors as the shutter remains open for a longer period resulting in completely unusable blown shots. The shutter duration for taking silky water shots varies from 5-20 seconds. That's what I learned from my experience so far. You can lengthen the shutter speed as long as you want. But the best practice duration for taking these kinda shots is between 5-20s. While exposure value has to be set to a very normal point depending on location. Or you can just keep your EV value to 0 or slightly lower than that. Most of the time it just works in daylight conditions.

The Most Essential thing: Make sure that you’ve got a tripod along with you or some tricks to keep your phone stable while shooting, otherwise it's not possible to get a proper photo. No matter how much stability your phone does have, you'll be needing a tripod to capture the long exposure photo that pops.

Night Shots

So, as far as I've experienced, it's a bit difficult to take long exposure night shots than smooth water shots. Many times, I just used to return back home without taking a single usable shot. All of those shots were just white color and nothin' else. During nights, it's hard to see the photography subject with low ISO value. So I just used to set up the ISO value to the point where I could properly see the live photo on a phone screen. And I use to start shooting keeping the shutter speed around 5-8 seconds.

You guys might have guessed what exactly went wrong here. When the ISO value was already set to the brightest point it became even brighter while keeping the shutter open for a longer time. So that resulted in the unusable shots as I had said before. So what I wanted to tell is that you need to act besides what the reality is.  While taking night shots you shouldn't rely upon what your phone screen is showing. So my tip for you guys is that — compose your shots first by setting up a higher ISO value (as you need to see what you're capturing and once you're done with the composing, lower your ISO value around 1000-1600 and set your shutter speed (SS) to 5-10s. But again, you need to react depending upon the situation.

Always remember More Darker - Higher ISO, Less Darker - Lower ISO

Traffic Trail Shots

It's almost similar to night photography but you need to be a bit more careful with the ISO value and Shutter Speed. You need to set a longer exposure time/shutter speed for this as capturing evenly composed traffic trail shots requires a longer time than just taking a night shot. Also, it depends upon the number of vehicles passing by. If there are lots of traffic, then keeping the short exposure time around 2-4 second will be fine. If there aren't too many vehicles,  you need to wait a while, and for which you need to set a longer exposure time around 8-15s or maybe longer than that. So in this case settings for taking the same traffic trail shots varies with the situation. Like I said before when you need to open your camera shutter for a shorter time, you must increase your ISO value and when you need to shoot for a longer time you need to set the lower ISO value. You must be able to decide concerning the lighting situations as well.

Star Trails

Taking star trail shots is a bit tricky. Meaning, you can't take star trail shots on manual mode 'cause of shutter speed limitations. The longer shutter speed available in my phone (HONOR Play) is only 30s. It may vary with the phone model. (Let me know in the comments if your phone has a Shutter Speed value longer than 30s.) Taking a nice star trail shot requires an hour. So you really can't do it with the manual mode. At least not with a smartphone. However, you can use the default Star Trail mode available in HONOR phones. That lets you keep your phone on standby for hours and as long as you want.

Long Exposure For Clouds

It's the same setting as you do it for taking silky water shots. :)

Sharing with you guys what the professional photographer around the world thinks about slow shutter photography.

To wrap up, I just wanted to tell you how the similar setting differs for different kinda photography. Most of the photos that I shared here were taken before when I wasn't much familiar with it but I'll be also trying some.

I wish I could tell the settings for each long exposure photo but there're no exact settings as it really really varies. But one thing is very clear, you need to lower the ISO value to the lowest point possible depending upon lighting situations and shutter duration. Hope you could learn by yourself step by step.  

And above all, if you could enable RAW mode, it's more useful for you as you can recover so many things and make lots of improvements during post-production. You can find my articles on RAW photography here >> https://community.hihonor.com/global/topicdetail/So-next-time-youre-gonna-take-a-shot-make-sure-you-SHOOT-THEM-IN-RAW/topicId-68250/

Do let me know in the comments if there's anything I can help with or some questions. I'll be very happy to answer all of 'em.

Bye-bye