Nikon D7000 manual Long Exposures

186 David Busch’s Nikon D7000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

Figure 7.4

Outdoors, you may need a shutter speed of 1/2,000th sec- ond to hand- hold a 500mm lens to capture distant wildlife.

Long Exposures

Longer exposures are a doorway into another world, showing us how even familiar scenes can look much different when photographed over periods measured in seconds. At night, long exposures produce streaks of light from moving, illuminated subjects like automobiles or amusement park rides. Extra-long exposures of seemingly pitch-dark subjects can reveal interesting views using light levels barely bright enough to see by. At any time of day, including daytime (in which case you’ll often need the help of neutral- density filters to make the long exposure practical), long exposures can cause moving objects to vanish entirely, because they don’t remain stationary long enough to register in a photograph.