Tips for long exposure

[BryanHJ]

Okay folks, got my P900 here and I want to do some really cool daytime long exposures. I've watched a bunch of tutorials on how to do it, but the settings available in this camera seem to be lacking to accomplish this sort of shot. The slowest I can appear to be able to select is 1/30th of a second which is much too fast to get what I want.

Is this outside of the abilities of the P900 or are their some tricks I can use to fudge this?

 

[Stank0]

I can't check since I don't have the camera anymore but I believe the longest exposure the camera supports is 30s.

But I might be mistaken.

 

[BryanHJ]

I can't check since I don't have the camera anymore but I believe the longest exposure the camera supports is 30s.

But I might be mistaken.

It does, but they're for night time scene like star trail and such. At 30 seconds I'd have to take the photo through a trash bag to keep the exposure right. I'm looking for more in the range of 1/3-1 seconds I think but I don't know how to get there, and if I can where to find it or what methods I can use to cheat. I'm guessing that this is aperture limited but I don't have a great deal of knowledge in manual photography yet, which as best as i can tell is F/8. Some of the video's I watched they were capable of f/20-f/30.

 

[Stank0]

Yes. You're right as far as I remember with the shutter, but I really don't believe P900 can do f/20 f/30.

I've got a whole book on my kindle about P900 and if I knew how to send it to you, I would. It's useless to me now.

 

[MarioV]

Okay folks, got my P900 here and I want to do some really cool daytime long exposures. I've watched a bunch of tutorials on how to do it, but the settings available in this camera seem to be lacking to accomplish this sort of shot. The slowest I can appear to be able to select is 1/30th of a second which is much too fast to get what I want.

Is this outside of the abilities of the P900 or are their some tricks I can use to fudge this?

That's a nice shot. If you want some water motion, you'll need an ND filter to avoid overexposure.

--
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Mario

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Mario

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[BryanHJ]

Yea that was in the video's I watched too, but at that point exposures were even longer to account for the reduced light. 15 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the shot and desired effect. I'm still thinking this camera isn't mechanically capable of doing that during the day.

 

[MarioV]

Yea that was in the video's I watched too, but at that point exposures were even longer to account for the reduced light. 15 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the shot and desired effect. I'm still thinking this camera isn't mechanically capable of doing that during the day.

Depends on the ND filter rating. An ND2 will halve it. ND4 to 1/4. You might have seen an ND8 or lower.

 

[Ianperegian]

Yea that was in the video's I watched too, but at that point exposures were even longer to account for the reduced light. 15 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the shot and desired effect. I'm still thinking this camera isn't mechanically capable of doing that during the day.

A shutter speed up to 15s is possible with the P900 in M mode, but the ISO is fixed at 100, according to the manual (p22).

As Mario said though, in daylight you would need to use an ND filter unless the light level was very low.

Ian

 

[Joe Pineapples II]

The problem is, because of the relatively small sensor, you can't close the aperture beyond something like f/8. The only way to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor more than that, so you can use a long exposure, is to use an ND filter. The P900 has a conventional filter thread, so that should be no problem. You just need a quick BOTE calculation to see which ND filter will give you the shutter speed you are after.

Joe

 

[BryanHJ]

Yea that was in the video's I watched too, but at that point exposures were even longer to account for the reduced light. 15 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the shot and desired effect. I'm still thinking this camera isn't mechanically capable of doing that during the day.

A shutter speed up to 15s is possible with the P900 in M mode, but the ISO is fixed at 100, according to the manual (p22).

As Mario said though, in daylight you would need to use an ND filter unless the light level was very low.

Ian

 

[BryanHJ]

The problem is, because of the relatively small sensor, you can't close the aperture beyond something like f/8. The only way to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor more than that, so you can use a long exposure, is to use an ND filter. The P900 has a conventional filter thread, so that should be no problem. You just need a quick BOTE calculation to see which ND filter will give you the shutter speed you are after.

Joe

I'm fine with going the filter route, I'm just more concerned about how to get slower than 1/30th as that's all it's showing I can go in my settings, even in A and M mode. I watched a guy use a technique where he stacked a series of shots to effectively lengthen the apparent length of time, but I use a chromebook as my daily driver so I don't have the processing power or ability to run a complex task like that in photoshop and the like, best I have available to me is Pixlr.

 

[BryanHJ]

HEYYYYY I figured it out, finally. The setting that was holding me back was my shot setting was set to continuous L. Exposures that long are only available in single shot mode.

Now that I sorta know what the hell is going on here I can begin to learn enough about manual mode to do some work here and make incredible shots of sky and water.

 

[Ianperegian]

Yea that was in the video's I watched too, but at that point exposures were even longer to account for the reduced light. 15 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the shot and desired effect. I'm still thinking this camera isn't mechanically capable of doing that during the day.

A shutter speed up to 15s is possible with the P900 in M mode, but the ISO is fixed at 100, according to the manual (p22).

As Mario said though, in daylight you would need to use an ND filter unless the light level was very low.

Ian

--
Ianperegian
http://www.ianperegian.com/

If so, I'm doing something wrong. As far down as I can roll is 1/30th. I must have something enabled that is keeping me from going further.

Yes, I found the same problem myself when I first tried it. I found that I needed to set to M mode, Auto ISO, Single Shot (not Continuous) and then I was able to set the shutter to 15s using the (all black) control wheel at the top of the camera (above the hand grip).

Edit - I just saw that you had sorted it out.

Ian

--
Ianperegian
http://www.ianperegian.com/

 

[johnincornwall]

I encountered this problem, then discovered that longer exposures ARE possible, but
NOT if you have shooting set to 'CONTINUOUS' as that locks exposure to 1/30 max.

 

[Augustin Man]

Please put the camera in Manual Mode and modifying the ISO, you'll obtain the longest time for exposure (the lowest shutter speed):

ISO 100 - 15s

ISO 200 - 8s

ISO 400 - 4s

ISO 800 - 2s

ISO 1600 - 1s

ISO 3200 & 6400 1/2s

Please refer also to the Reference Section pag. #71.

All the best,

Augustin

P.S. That's only available for SINGLE exposure, otherwise (Continuos, BSS, etc) the exposure is being limited to 1/30s.

 

[Alexandra Petkov]

Okay folks, got my P900 here and I want to do some really cool daytime long exposures. I've watched a bunch of tutorials on how to do it, but the settings available in this camera seem to be lacking to accomplish this sort of shot. The slowest I can appear to be able to select is 1/30th of a second which is much too fast to get what I want.

Is this outside of the abilities of the P900 or are their some tricks I can use to fudge this?

So you can change ISO, F and Seconds
You need to klick on FN on top of the Camera to change the ISO! it could get to 6300

 

[Kwicko]

Okay folks, got my P900 here and I want to do some really cool daytime long exposures. I've watched a bunch of tutorials on how to do it, but the settings available in this camera seem to be lacking to accomplish this sort of shot. The slowest I can appear to be able to select is 1/30th of a second which is much too fast to get what I want.

Is this outside of the abilities of the P900 or are their some tricks I can use to fudge this?

So you can change ISO, F and Seconds
You need to klick on FN on top of the Camera to change the ISO! it could get to 6300

As far as I have been able to ascertain, once you go into Manual mode, you can change the f number and the time, but the ISO locks in at 100. This is still allowing shutter openings of 15 seconds or more on my P900, but I just figured this out and haven't tried it at night yet.

 

[Pastor Yip]

HOW TO HAVE LONG EXPOSURE: I am so excited that I found the way with the Nikon P900 to have long exposure. Go to SCENE. Then choose FIREWORKS SHOW. Then it can have exposure up to 4 seconds.

I also have a Nikon P7700. Choose SCENE. Then choose NIGHT LANDSCAPE. Then choose TRIPOD. It can go up to 2 seconds.

 

[Tracymarie]

I have a P900 and ive no clue how to set it to take a long exposure, its so complicated , i try to take the sky full of stars but fail miserably, also to take a long exposure of the ocean, can you give me some guidance as to what settings i need to use, thanks Tracymarie

 

[E_Davies]

I have a P900 and ive no clue how to set it to take a long exposure, its so complicated , i try to take the sky full of stars but fail miserably, also to take a long exposure of the ocean, can you give me some guidance as to what settings i need to use, thanks Tracymarie

You'll need a tripod of course

Select Manual mode [M]

Depending on subject, set shutter speed low. Between 1s and 30s

Aperture around f/5.6 (can change this to make the photo brighter or darker)

Keep ISO low 100 or 200

Use the 10 second self timer.

.

Experiment...

For daytime shots you'll need a 67mm 'Neutral Density' (ND) filter.

This reduces the light into the camera to compensate for the long exposure. (Otherwise too much light goes in and you end up with a white picture)