T-Dog wrote: Long exposure pictures of fireflies, taken in Japan -
I am here to ya... only the second in that series was done by long exposure using a "still" camera...
I speak as one who has done this!
The other three are almost certainly shot via video, and knowing those Japanese, at 25fps or so. (Of course these days, many DSLR's are capable of shooting such video sequences, as well as standard stills).
Then each frame is stacked as layers, using something like Photoshop or After Effects for the application of choice, and each layer but the bottom one is set to "Lighten".
What happens is that the background very barely changes, as the frames are all almost exactly the same exposure... but the buttlights are brighter, and show through all the layers.
The obvious clue is that the lights are "dots of time", rather than moving "swishes" as in the second shot.
Now, the second shot was probably done with a similar technique, though shooting much longer than the video's 1/25th sec... those lengths look to me to be more on the scale of 1/8 sec to 1/2 second exposures, and then layered using the "lighten" technique.
Then again, I am unfamiliar with the speed and cornering agility of rice-burning fireflies... your exposure may vary.
Just in case anyone got a bug up their ass to go try this...
The TAP Room