Long exposure photography

As some of you may have read, I've begun shooting my way through my camera collection. I've never done any long-exposure photography, and I'd like to give it a try. The Nikon FE seems particularly well-suited to this, and I'd like to try some with the Olympus OM10. I want to set up at an intersection and get light streaks from passing cars. From what I've read, you just set the FE to the desired aperture, and the camera does the rest. I think I read it will make exposures up to an hour, which is way more than enough. I don't know about the OM10. It seems that the manual adapter allows 1 to 1/1000 second. What if I set f/16 on the lens? Will the OM10 automatically time the shutter? Or is there a limit? If I wanted to set the exposure manually, using Bulb, how do I calculate the time? (I understand that intersections are different and have different lighting, different amounts of traffic, etc.)

I've only done long exposures on digital. I cranked up the ISO very high set a wide aperture and shot test shots with relatively short shutter speeds to discover an EV. From there I calculated the exposure time based on the difference with the aperture and ISO I wanted to use for the real shot.

 

-K

I do what KRB describes for very long exposures, e.g., night photography in parks. For an approximation that avoids having to do calculations on the fly: the shutter speed in seconds at ISO 6400 approximates the shutter speed in minutes at ISO 100.

 

However, I rarely find that necessary in urban night photography; I can usually meter at the ISO I will use. My cameras will do exposures up to 30 seconds, which is enough for most urban night photography. For the most part, I shoot at base ISO (100 in my case) and expose to the right. Then I darken the image in post. That produces very smooth, noiseless images. If you want light trails, you won't want a high ISO anyway because it will give you too fast a shutter speed.

 

Urban night photography isn't always easy to meter correctly because of the big differences in lighting. For that reason, I never allow the camera to select the exposure. I shoot in manual and I rely on test shots as well as meter readings to pick an exposure.

I should have specified I'm using 35mm film.

Discovered this late.

 

here is a Nikkormat EL, Nikkor-S 55mm f/1.2 photo on High Speed Ektachrome , on tripod, but no longer remember the other details

Edited September 16, 2019 by JDMvW

I'm also a big fan of night and long exposure photography.

This was shot with a Canon 5D2 and a 70-200 /f4 Canon zoom.

 

NYC Traffic Flow 30 sec. F11 @ 122mm ISO 100

Nice photo. Love the colors along with the sense of calm of the night and the energy in the road itself and its lines. You captured a very familiar feeling here.