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Hi Guys,

Quick question I'm posting on behalf of a mate.

If he wants to get a long exposure on his D70S say around 30 minutes plus what does he have to do to keep the shutter open? Is there a setting he can use or does he have to hold his finger on the trigger the whole time?

Any help would be greatly appreciated and make me seem far smarter than I actually am.

Cheers

Ben

Probably a cable release with a locking button - pretty much all of the $10 ebay jobs will do this. Stick it in bulb mode, trigger and lock the button down, and wander off for 30 minutes.

Benny2707 wrote:If he wants to get a long exposure on his D70S say around 30 minutes plus what does he have to do

Not use a D70.

They're not designed for this sort of usage, and the results will be very disappointing. The sensor gets too hot, leading to colour casts and all manner of ugly artefacts.

gstark wrote:

Benny2707 wrote:If he wants to get a long exposure on his D70S say around 30 minutes plus what does he have to do

Not use a D70.

They're not designed for this sort of usage, and the results will be very disappointing. The sensor gets too hot, leading to colour casts and all manner of ugly artefacts.

I'll pass it on. He's thinking he might go down the D300 route soonish anyway.

Benny2707 wrote:If he wants to get a long exposure on his D70S say around 30 minutes plus what does he have to do to keep the shutter open? Is there a setting he can use or does he have to hold his finger on the trigger the whole time?

The Nikon ML-L3 remote makes bulb exposures easy - and it's cheap (~$20). Press once to start, press again to stop. From memory I think 30 minutes might be the maximum exposure length with the D70.

I've had some success with long exposures on the D70, but I haven't tried 30 minutes.. If you want to experiment try leaving the long exposure noise filtering on and make sure you start with a fully charged battery (or an AC power supply ).

Here is an interesting thread for you Benny, about D70 sensor overheating on long exposures: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=822&hilit=d70+heating

xorl wrote: If you want to experiment try leaving the long exposure noise filtering on and make sure you start with a fully charged battery (or an AC power supply ).

Be aware of how the long exposure NR works in the D70. It starts by making your original exposure, and it them makes a secondary (black) exposure of equal time to create a reference frame from which it can make its calculations. Thus, if you're wanting a 30 minute exposure, then the total exposure time, for both frames, will be, yep, 60 minutes!

But the real issue is sensor overheating; I don't yet know if the D300 is any better.

If this represents a large part of your friend's photographic tasks, they may be better off looking at a Canon solution.

Thanks Gary. I'm a bit like you and will never have the need to shoot anything longer than a minute at max. The timed thing is just a new experience for him to try. I'd like to have a crack as well but I'm not going to switch sides to enable me to do it for longer (use the inuendo there as you see fit).

I'll pass on the comments.

Thanks to everyone for the input.