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Digital Cameras Allowing For Real Long-Time Exposures


capmaster

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Posted

Technical progress sometimes reveals a remarkable degradation of performance like the common problem I describe here.

 

A retrospective shows that still photo cameras on a budget using film allowed for timewise theoretically unlimited long-time exposures. Even those with just fixed lens, viewfinder and a shutter providing just 1/25...1/30 to 1/250...1/300 seconds for moment exposures offered B and some even T in the 1950s and 1960s. An appropriate tripod costed more than these cameras did then.

 

The advent of electronically controlled shutters like that of the Yashica TL Electro X caused the first problems here: As soon as the battery was exhausted, the shutter closed.

 

In the digital era, battery consumption is not the only trouble. Image noise, in particular shot noise due to natural light quantization, is intensified by the thermal dissipation heating up the sensors. The single advantage is that compared to film there's no lack of reciprocity effect.

 

However, the biggest problem are the limitations of camera designs. It's hard to find digital cameras allowing for real long-time exposures, that is several minutes to several hours. To my research they call for professional level cameras costing big heaps of money.

 

Therefore here is my question to all the still photo enthusiasts owning an advanced digital camera providing B and/or T, cable release connection and/or wireless control: What model do you use? Are there perhaps any cameras on a budget I overlooked?

Posted

Are you using a DSLR?

 

What are you trying to photograph?

 

 

you should be able to set exposure time in seconds in manual mode, or in the Time Variable exposure modes.

 

 

Depending on what you're trying to photograph you could need some neutral density filters to help avoid over exposing.

Posted

Are you using a DSLR?...

What are you trying to photograph?...

In the digital era, battery consumption is not the only trouble. Image noise, in particular shot noise due to natural light quantization, is intensified by the thermal dissipation heating up the sensors.

...the biggest problem are the limitations of camera designs. It's hard to find digital cameras allowing for real long-time exposures, that is several minutes to several hours...

As Cap mentions 'several hours' my guess would be he is talking about astro-photography and the like. What else could require a 7 hour exposure time?

 

My first DSLR was a mid-level Canon 20D and it had a 'Bulb' setting (my current 7D has one too which suggests to me that the 'B' setting might be found fairly readily).

In theory this would suggest that were an electronic shutter-release employed and the release-button 'locked-on' by some simple method then the shutter would stay open until released. The 20D even came with a mains adapter unit which slotted-in in place of the battery pack which meant that the camera could be plugged into a mains socket circumventing the 'battery-life' problem.

 

Whether this would actually work in practice is something I never felt the need to discover.

However......there was quite a bit of discussion about the thermal dissipation issue on the Leica Forum and various members did, in fact, warn about the possible dangers to the sensor for the reasons mentioned in the OP.

Because of this I'm disinclined to undergo a test on this matter using my own kit...

 

Pip.

Posted

I still have and use my 20D,... I've thought about upgrading, but I don't use it enough to justify,, besides it would cut into the guitar money! :)

Posted

It's called a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera.

I had a Pentax K-1000 and Eos-1 but i always wanted and never got a Nikon F3. I remember the owner of a local photo store in 96 telling me he was selling his business in the next year because those new Digital cameras were going to make photo developing obsolete. People told him not to close while he was on top, but he did and he was smart for doing so. Within a few short years photo developing went the way of the dinosaur.

Posted

No one does exposures that long. If you see a photgraph of say a 1 hr exposure it will be a set of stacked images which make up that time which includes Bias Dark and Flat frames to remove hot spots on the camera sensor.

 

Regards

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