Fuji Disappointed with long exposures with X-E1 and X100S

mikelundeen

New Member
I've been shooting some long exposure shots with my two Fujis and they haven't delivered the results I was hoping for.

I shot a creek to get a motion blur of the waves with the X100S but it doesn't deliver the smoothness I was used to with my Nikon D7000. This was shot in JPEG.

ImageUploadedBySeriousCompacts1404312817.242463.jpg


I shot some star trails with my X-E1 and 18-55 in RAW. The trails are streaks but with solid spots spaced along their length. The exposure was 15 minutes and there appear to be 15 spots. I used a class 10 card with a speed of 30 which I would think is adequate.

ImageUploadedBySeriousCompacts1404313068.066091.jpg


Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.


Sent from my iPad using SeriousCompacts
 
On the first image, it looks underexposed. The background is at least a stop too dark, maybe even two.

On the second image, I'm not sure I understand the problem.
 
(Just my opinion) Looks like the first is both too dark, AND was exposed for longer than you'd need to get smooth water. It looks like that water was jumpy enough to really "fluff" out like cotton if exposed for long enough. So a brighter aperture (or fewer stops on the ND) and slightly shorter duration might've been better? As for the star trails, I've never shot longer than about 30 seconds so I'm not sure about the lumpiness of the stars.
 
Thanks to both of you responders. I'll keep experimenting! There is fun in the process and discovering.


Sent from my iPad using SeriousCompacts
 
My first thought about the lumpiness of the star trails was that the camera isn't exposing continuously for 15 minutes, but is instead building up a composite image from a succession of separate exposures, one every minute or so. That would account for the lumps, but not for any streaks between the lumps.

If the camera is gathering light uniformly throughout the exposure, could this be some sort of noise reduction effect? I know cameras can do odd things when applying NR to very long exposures.

-R
 
Back
Top