Tuesday, 16 June 2015

pinhole cameras - How properly expose a long exposure in daylight?


I was shooting some lake waves with some nice color in them, and I wanted to do a long exposure to smooth out the wave and color, similar to the effect you see from a long exposure of whitewater or a waterfall.



However, the image was way too overexposed, even at 1/2 a second (f/20, 100 ISO):


enter image description here


I went to the camera store and asked them. The guy at the offered two solutions:



  1. Shoot an HDR shot, either in camera, or compose one in photoshop.

  2. Get a variable nuetral density filter.


However I wonder, is there a way to make a very small aperture in a lens-cap, ala a poor-man's pinhole camera, that would reduce light sufficiently to properly expose a very long timelapse?


Are there other methods available?



Answer




You are spot on! Use a sewing needle heated in a candle flame and carefully pierce the lens cap. Make a trial exposure and enlarge the hole if needed. Keep in mind that a tiny pinhole will induce diffraction that degrades. Also, a pinhole has super depth-of-field. Anyway, experimentation leads to discovery.


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