Tag: long exposure

Long exposure photography is something which has grabbed my attention over the last few months.

With my Canon 1300D it’s simple. You set the shutter speed to 30″ or BULB, choose small aperture and find a subject. Lovely night shots with light trails if you’re lucky enough to have a car pass by.

I also have a Fujifilm XE-2 and it takes great photos.

But for some reason I couldn’t get the shutter to stay open for longer than 1 second. I thought to myself it must be damaged / broken. I bought the camera as used and it has been with me for more than five years.

But tonight I wanted to shoot long exposure with the Fuji. Come hell or high water. So into the internet I waded and thought to myself – why not ask chatGPT?

It gave me a few suggestions and I tried some of them and then this came up:

When your X-E2 shows SS 1”, it’s set to a 1-second shutter speed, not Bulb mode.
Even though you might have turned the dial toward “B,” the camera isn’t actually in Bulb yet — it’s just sitting on the one-second mark.

Here’s how to fix it and get true Bulb mode

1. Check your shutter speed dial
   • Turn the shutter-speed dial past 1″ (the one-second mark) to “B.”
   • It should clearly display “B” on top of the dial, not “1″”.
2. Confirm on your screen
   • The LCD or EVF should now display “BULB” (not “SS 1″”).
   • Now the camera will keep the shutter open for as long as you hold the button (up to 60 minutes).
3. Make sure the camera is in Manual (M) mode
   • If the mode dial is in A or another auto mode, Bulb won’t activate properly.
   • Turn it to M.
4. If you’re still limited to 1″, check these:
   • Electronic shutter: Bulb only works with the mechanical shutter.
     Go to MENU → Shooting Settings → Shutter Type → MS (Mechanical Shutter).
   • Drive mode: Make sure you’re in single shot (S), not continuous or bracket.
     Bulb won’t engage in burst modes.
5. Optional — remote or timer
   • If you have a remote release, you can press once to open and once to close (no need to hold).
   • Otherwise, you’ll have to hold the shutter button the entire time in Bulb.

Point 4, sub point 1.

After I switched back to ‘mechanical shutter’ in the options I found my problem of a 1″ SS was solved. I now have the option to shoot in BULB mode. I just need a remote to connect to the camera – to keep the shutter open in BULB mode requires me to hold down the shutter button which causes some shake in the camera, based on what I see in the images.

tl;dr

If you have any thoughts on this, and experience with shooting long exposures on your Fuji I’d like to hear about them – leave a comment or drop a comment on Substack.

Thanks for reading : )

PS – some additional reading on shutters for the X series

Electronic and mechanical shutters.