A reason to use an extra-long exposure

Sunday 20 July 2025, 13:31 by Nando Harmsen | 2,861 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Long exposures can remove movement from water. This brings calm to a photo and can make it minimalist. Clouds can be a reason to use an extra-long exposure.

A short shutter speed shows a lot of detail in water surfaces. Small waves, ripples and reflections of light. A very short shutter speed even freezes all movement.

The details that become visible with short shutter speeds can have an overwhelming effect. There is too much to see. I have already written a whole article about this. A longer shutter speed brings more calm.

Getting started with photographing Hvitserkur. I use a Haida M10 II holder with a 15-stop ND filter to get a shutter speed that is long enough.
If you use a neutral density filter to make the shutter speed longer, the movement in the restless water is removed. In many cases, a shutter speed between 30 and 60 seconds works very well.

Does 60 seconds produce the desired result? In that case, there is no need to use an even longer exposure. If the movement has already been removed from the water, a longer shutter speed will make no difference. There may still be a reason to use a much longer exposure: the clouds.

Hvitserkur in Iceland with a 202-second exposure. The water is beautifully flat. But I don't like the small amount of movement in the clouds.
Clouds move much more slowly than water. With water, 30 or 60 seconds is enough to remove all movement. For clouds, that is not long enough.

A long exposure that is too short causes a small amount of movement in the clouds. However, it is so little that it looks like motion blur rather than the long-exposure effect. In fact, it is somewhere between movement and no movement.

Pay attention to the movement of the clouds and estimate how quickly they are moving. Adjust your exposure time accordingly. This may mean exposing for many minutes, longer than is needed for the water.

This was taken with a 404-second exposure, which is 'only' one stop longer than the previous photo. The water is almost the same. But I like the movement in the clouds much more.

Don't make the exposure too long either. At some point, the movement in the clouds will be blurred into an even grey mass with no movement.

With thanks to Sony Benelux for providing the camera and lenses.

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