Mad Hatter Imagery wrote:
Is there a way to create a good equivalent between many frames of a video and a long exposure photo? Assuming the exposures are even and both have all light information one wants. Can many pictures be combined somehow to create the smooth continuous seeming longer exposure?

When I was the rep for Kodak, they gave me what was then a state of the art digital camera, much more like a DSLR than the typical point and shoot.  One of the things it did that no other consumer model camera did at the time was take long exposure photos and remarkably properly exposed.

I did some experiments with long exposures, usually at night.  What I noticed was the longer my exposure was, the processing time became exponentially longer as well.  It wasn't like at the end of one long exposure you could immediately snap another photo as you would with film.  Ya had to wait for the previous photo to be processed before snapping another.

When I examined the photos closer I noticed that there's be a TINY gap in some of the light streaks.  The longer the exposure was the more tiny gaps would appear in those light streaks at evenly spaced intervals.

I figured out what was happening, and it's not much different than what your original post is asking.

The camera was set up to make long exposures out of several photos that are internally 'stacked' and then processed after the image was taken.  Unlike a 'true' long exposure photo, the black sky didn't lighten up, it remained black.  The gaps in the light streaks were from the camera ending one exposure and starting another.

It's possible that it's the same way most digital cameras currently do long exposures, although you probably will no longer see any gaps in the light streaks because the processors are immensely more powerful and faster.

So it's very possible to use individual frames of a video and 'stack' them for the same effect.  As a matter of fact I think that's how some astrophotography is done.

SayCheeZ!  wrote:

When I was the rep for Kodak, they gave me what was then a state of the art digital camera, much more like a DSLR than the typical point and shoot.  One of the things it did that no other consumer model camera did at the time was take long exposure photos and remarkably properly exposed.

I did some experiments with long exposures, usually at night.  What I noticed was the longer my exposure was, the processing time became exponentially longer as well.  It wasn't like at the end of one long exposure you could immediately snap another photo as you would with film.  Ya had to wait for the previous photo to be processed before snapping another.

When I examined the photos closer I noticed that there's be a TINY gap in some of the light streaks.  The longer the exposure was the more tiny gaps would appear in those light streaks at evenly spaced intervals.

I figured out what was happening, and it's not much different than what your original post is asking.

The camera was set up to make long exposures out of several photos that are internally 'stacked' and then processed after the image was taken.  Unlike a 'true' long exposure photo, the black sky didn't lighten up, it remained black.  The gaps in the light streaks were from the camera ending one exposure and starting another.

It's possible that it's the same way most digital cameras currently do long exposures, although you probably will no longer see any gaps in the light streaks because the processors are immensely more powerful and faster.

So it's very possible to use individual frames of a video and 'stack' them for the same effect.  As a matter of fact I think that's how some astrophotography is done.

That's good to hear. So no special stacking method? Just average them all together?