Long exposure shots are washed out

Noname9

New member
Hello! I have a Nikon d3300 and I bought a tripod because I wanted to explore taking some long exposure photos. I have a big Field out In back of my house that is really long grass that blows in the wind. I am trying to take a picture where the field becomes smooth from it's moving with a long exposure shot. When I try to take the photo it becomes fully washed out to the point it is fully white. I am using manual setting and trying a 2 second exposure. I set the iso to 100 and the aperture I tried between f6 and f22 and nothing worked. Anybody have any ideas of what is going wrong? Thank you!!!
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
You'll need a neutral density filter to do what you want. You can't just shoot at a slower speed without adjusting the exposure/aperture to compensate for the amount of light, and closing your lens' aperture down to the smallest aperture probably still lets too much light in and over-exposes the image.

A Neutral Density filter will add from 4 to 10+ stops of negative-exposure to your equation...
 

cwgrizz

Senior Member
Challenge Team
@Noname9

Welcome to the forum. The scene is apparently too bright for the camera to adjust to with that slow shutter speed. You are on the right track by using a high aperture setting of f22 and the ISO of 100, but the 2 seconds is still letting too much light in. That is where, as Fred said, you need a neutral density filter to block more of the light. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. Many on here are ready and willing to assist in your journey with your camera.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Welcome to the forum, i wanted to try long exposures but wasnt sure i would be that interested so i bought a cheap filter off ebay, i knew that i would need to buy a more expensive one if i became interested, remember to maintain quality in the image you need a good filter.
 

STM

Senior Member
If you are doing this during a bright time of day, you will only be able to achieve the effects you want by using ND (Neutral Density) filters. I have a set of 3; 2x (1 stop), 4x (2 stops) and 8x (3 stops) and they come in very handy for things like this. If you get very high quality ones, mine are Hoya HMC, you can stack two together without any significant loss in IQ.
 
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