Long Exposures....

[jimpritchard]

Evening all,

First time this sub forum...

I used to be into photography many years ago and had an Canon Eos 50e, which was a great SLR.
Sold it a couple of years ago, and since then, my only experience of photography has been on a Kodak C813, which has obvious limitations...
I really enjoy creative photograhy using long exposures, and am looking to upgrade the C813 to something which will allow me to become more creative.
Question is, am I limited to Digital SLR's, or is there a cheaper alternative anyone can recommend until fund allow me to purchase a full blown digital SLR?

[Zad]

How about an Eos 20D? A couple of generations old, but still a very well designed and specified camera.

e.g. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Canon-EOS-20D-Body-only-Digi...

[RobDickinson]

Any old dSLR will be good, I'd probably avoid the 10D and 300D ancient and probably not worth it.

Theres a lot of pro sumer higher end digicams that may have in camera noise reduction (dark field subtraction) and manual control that will work.

Just make sure you can put filters on it to slow that exposure down when you want.

[The Riddler]

My last camera was a Fuji S5600, this is the camera that introduced me to long exposure photography. But it only had upto 15sec shutter time. I'd try look at some of the bridge camera's available, but if i was in the same position again i would just buy a DSLR to start with.

[AndWhyNot]

Lots of bridge cameras allow exposure durations up to 8, 10, 15 or 30 sec. If this isn't long enough and you end up buying used, avoid Nikon models prior to D300. My D80 used to survive 5 mins or so without too much long-exposure sensor noise appearing in the image; these days (after 15000 shutter actuations and numerous LE shots (5-60 mins) it barely lasts 30 sec without the tell-tale purple corners beginning to show).

Canon guys I shoot with are generally happy with the LE performance of their 300/ 350/ 400D. Adjusting WB to overcome the orange glow of ambient streetlit areas additionally seems more effective on the Canons than my D80.

20mins on the D80: