Thursday, October 1, 2009

Long (really long) exposure

This Summer a good friend visited us and brought his new "toy": a Pentax DA 12-24mm f4. It is a very nice lens, but such short focal lengths demand some getting used to.

We decided to try some long exposures with this lens and his K10D. One of our subjects was the XVIII century fortress shown below, shot at ISO 200, f4 and a 30 sec exposure (and a tripod, of course). During the exposure, we added three flash bursts along the left wall, in order to make it standout a bit. Framing the shot was quite tricky - this is a very dark location and we pretty much could not see a thing. The light that was gathered in this long exposure came from relatively distant streetlights. So we had to adjust the composition based on trial and error. In the end, we were quite happy with the result. The combination of the yellow and white lights coming from the street and the flash, respectively, worked out quit well.


Pentax K10D + Pentax DA 12-24/4 + off-camera flash

I also tried a few short exposure shots with my 25mm at f2.8 and ISO 800, using an off-camera flash to lit the side wall. A curious result, but definitely not as impressive as the previous one.


Pentax K10D + Zeiss Distagon 25/2.8 + off-camera flash

5 comments:

Somanna said...

That is a lens I drool about but will probably do so for quite sometime... what focal length was the first shot taken at?

Nice idea about the off-camera flash. Also, good descriptions as usual.

Frank M. said...

The lens was at 14mm. We did a bit post-processing to "correct" the fish-eye effect a little bit. One has to frame carefully in order to obtain good results with such a wide angle, but it was too dark for that...
Thanks for commenting!

Unknown said...

Lovely shot, Frank.

The way you've used the flash in the middle of the shot contrasts so well with the coloured lights on each side. And nicely balanced too.

Very inspiring. :-)

cheers,
Jostein

Hin Man said...

stunning, please share more and we can all learn it from you.

Robin said...

Very impressive composition ! The different color temperature light sources create a surreal yet credible image, without the common annoying feeling of too much post processing. I definitely like it a lot.