What is regarded as a long exposure? well it can depend on a photographer's perspective. A night scene photographer may think 5 minutes quite normal or an astronomer a few hours.
For my landscapes anywhere between 1/4 to 1/30th of a second is a frequent range of shutter speeds without using any external filters to lengthen the time, this is usually a function of small aperture for large Depth of Field and the low ambient light I prefer to shoot in.
Recently though I have been extending my exposure times into the minutes rather than fractions of seconds, for this I have to place a light inhibiting filter in front of my lens to extend the shutter times. There are many manufacturers of such filters and vary in range of light reduction from 1 stop of light all the way to 10 stops. I've been having some fun using the 10 stop filter and made some reasonable images but, is it just a fad I'm going through or is the long exposure here to stay?

This is a normal shot for me, a 1/8th of a second exposure time produced a relatively sharp and motion free image, much as you could imagine seeing with your own eyes perhaps.




This is the same scene with similar light but a 2 minutes and 15 second exposure.



You can see that the ripples in the water have completely been smoothed out as if there wasn't a breath of wind but the sky looks as though the clouds are being blown perhaps.

I like both versions for different reasons and can't really say if I prefer one over the other, for me the 10 stop filter has a place in my bag as a useful tool to experiment with and hopefully occasionally to capture something memorable.

Please click on an image or visit the Lakes, Tarns and Waters gallery for more.

For a tutorial on the selection and use of a 10 stop filter please click here.