Comments on: The World’s Longest Exposures

By: Jyothis Pushparaj

Jyothis Pushparaj — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:53:09 +0000

Amazing piece of art work with a basic equipment.

By: frank

frank — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 02:14:20 +0000

“I didn’t read the accompanying link…”
Well, that explains the rest of your comment doesn’t it?

By: Lynda

Lynda — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:17:50 +0000

Ruby, the idea with the 100 year exposure is to photograph time itself, not observable life.

By: Ruby

Ruby — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:31:21 +0000

I didn’t read the accompanying link, but the idea of a 100-year exposure of a hotel room sounds utterly ridiculous and stupid.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:43:08 +0000

Although 6 mos is a long exposure time, it is not the longest. Michael Wesely has shutter times of 2 to 3 YEARS. His 2001 project shows the entire construction of MoMA– which means 3 years with an open shutter.
http://www.toxicocultura.com/blog/?p=816

By: David Hardwick Wedding Photography

David Hardwick Wedding Photography — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:32:59 +0000

..and I though that 4 mins was a long exposure.

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!!!!!!!!!