Why and What?
In this video I share a very useful tip for Long Exposure Photography. What your camera does when you take a long exposure is that it will wait the same length as the exposure to process the image.
Why it’s doing this is because it’s trying to reduce any NOISE that may be generated by the sensor of your digital camera when the shutter has been open for a longer than usual period of time. You will see this happen when you take a 5 second, 10 second or longer exposure.
This setting mostly activated on all DSLR and Mirrorless cameras you buy these days. And it interferes with your ability to take one shot after next as it introduces extra lag. You will notice that your camera will display a “Busy” message on the screen or “Processing”.
The Solution
Luckily the fix is easy, look for a setting that is related to “Long Exposure Noise Reduction” in your camera manual or google it to find out where this option is in your model of the camera. Once you’ve located this option simple turn it from ON or AUTO to OFF.
Now your camera will not wait after a Long Exposure to do any noise reduction and will be ready to take the next photo immediately. This is something I turn off all the time on my camera as there is enough details in the RAW file for me to reduce any noise that may be present in the photo. Although what I’m using now, Fujifilm X-T2 and X-T3 are really good at noise performance and even at very high ISO have little to no noise.
Conclusion
So make sure you change the settings on your camera and don’t get restricted by this setting. I also wrote a blog post about my default settings for my X-Series camera, I probably should have included this setting in it but unfortunately I missed it until I had to take a long exposure shot on the X-T3. Nevertheless, that gave me and idea to do another video and write another blog post.