sjb3

I haven't tried long exposure photography before, but saw some very interesting videos on the subject on You Tube, and subsequently discovered this forum on UHH. I have a good Bridge camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ1000) which is capable of doing long exposures except for one serious shortcoming: For some reason known only to the manufacturer, the Bulb setting is limited to a max of (as it states in the user manual) "about 120 seconds". I'd always thought, and clearly remember from my film camera days, that in the bulb setting the shutter stayed open until I closed it. There are bound to be situations where one might have to keep the shutter open for longer than 2 minutes to get the desired exposure. What do you do? Is it practical (or even possible) to say, having calculated that you need an exposure of 6 minutes at f16, to set the camera to bulb (the camera being mounted on a rock-steady tripod), get out my stopwatch and make 3 consecutive 2-minute Bulb exposures and then stack 'em in Photoshop Elements?

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

From an internet search:

"For shooting long exposure star trails I find shooting in bulb mode with the shutter open for 25 or 30 seconds, you then use the timer mode and make it take 100 or so shots over a time each of 30 seconds, can't remember what the exact settings it but allow 33 seconds on the timer this gives the camera time to write the file to card etc...

once done you can then use photoshop and layer the photos on top of each other and this then creates the trails, that in the world of a permanently open shutter would get, some tutorials online...

it it was quite magical watching photoshop layer them and slowly but surely the trails all came in..."

sjb3

So stacking seems to be the way to go, and I know a bit about that and can proceed accordingly; Thanks much!

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Good luck with it!

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Even simpler if it has "Multiple Exposure" in the menu. Then no stacking is needed.

sjb3

Chapter 8 of the User manual: "Gives an effect like multi exposure. (Up to 4 times equivalent per a single image)" Looks like there's an imposed limit on how many times I can expose any given image. It might just be simpler to make a batch and stack them.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Sorry, but 3x2min. stacked is not equivalent to a single 1x6min. image. 4or5x2min. stacked would give you much the same signal-to-noise ratio, per the graph.

bwa

bwa

sjb3

You quite obviously know a lot more about this than I do (or for that matter, most likely ever will!) so I'll stick to what's actually available to me with my particular camera, which actually isn't at all bad; I might not be able to make those really Artsy-looking long exposure shots where the shutter stays open for 15 or 20 minutes and the whole scene looks quite ethereal, but there's plenty that I can do and have a good time doing it. I do thank you for the valuable information you took the time & trouble to provide.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

You can image a whole lot of low light/moonlit/astronomy targets with two minute exposures, particularly if you play with ISO settings, and your camera should be pretty good at higher ISO's.

Your camera's multi-exposure feature is designed to reduce image noise on stationary images. It normally shoots four images and stacks them giving a noise reduction of 2x.

bwa