Comments on: The World’s Longest Exposures

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:23:32 +0000

Cool, but I think you meant extremely crude…

By: James

James — Sun, 03 May 2009 23:17:00 +0000

This picture brings out the brilliance in photography. It’s beyond looking for something pleasing to the eye, and how creative one can get with a camera.

By: David Keech

David Keech — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:18:00 +0000

@ jacqueline

There are three things that normally affect the exposure of an image:

1. The aperture.
2. The shutter speed.
3. The film speed.

If you increase one, you will have to decrease one of the others or you will have an over-exposed photo.

In general, things are roughly halved or doubled each time they are decreased or increased. 1/60th of a second becomes 1/125th of a second or 1/30th of a second. ISO 100, ISO 200 and ISO 400 are the most common film speeds although digital cameras often have settings of ISO 800 and ISO 1600. As for the aperture, each stop is spaced so that the area that is open to let light into the lens is doubled as you go up.

In this case, we know the shutter speed was six months and the aperture was very small (a pinhole) but I suspect that just using a pinhole-sized aperture wouldn’t be enough to balance the extremely long exposure time.

He may have used a slower film but I have no idea how slow films can go and if that could ever be enough to add up to six months.

My guess is that he further reduced the amount of light reaching the film by placing a dark filter in front of the film that blocked some of the light. This would have taken a lot of trial-and-error, probably taking exposures of several days at a time and viewing the results until he figured out how much filtering he would need for a six month exposure.

By: chris

chris — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:07:00 +0000

It was just the other day I was talking to someone about the virtues of pin hole cameras. That photographer must have had the patience of a saint. beautiful!!!!!!!!!

By: Hal

Hal — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Bristol ftw! :D

By: jacqueline

jacqueline — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:24:00 +0000

I don’t get how it wasn’t over exposed… someone please explain!!

By: annejumps

annejumps — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:08:00 +0000

“Rude” is used correctly here; one of its definitions is “crude.”

Amazing photo.

By: rfl717

rfl717 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:17:00 +0000

@ Michael David – Considering you have to be looking south to see the sun through the whole arc in the Northern Hemisphere the West is on the right side of the picture (…unless I’m completely wrong in which case I’ll be corrected shortly)

By: Dennis

Dennis — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:54:00 +0000

in the northern hemisphere, the sun is towards the south of the zenith. so, i think in the picture we are facing south, and thus west is to the right.

also, i’m thinking the photo must be distorted quite a bit to get such a wide shot – the negative lined on the inside of the curved can would in effect create a wide angle shot.

great idea!

By: nikki

nikki — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:30:00 +0000

The arcs look more as though they’re coming at you than necesarily going upward if you look at it the right way. This was a great post. Thanks!

recaptcha: obvious ly

Serious ly.