Still-up Your Scope Part-1

I have been spent quite some time in a last few days learning and understanding features of my camera. It now gives me pleasure to share what I have learned in the past few days.
Part 1 of Still-up your scope is actually a trick, exploiting a feature of camera and making people ghostly. Like this one where I have posed with my office colleague and friend Manjeet.

And no, the trick I am talking about is not a cheap photoshop trick. This is a very simple trick which lies in photographing and not in photo editing. You will be needing a camera which allows you to manually set the shutter speed and aperture. Once you have it, here is what you got to do.

1. Set the camera to a very very slow shutter speed. I used 30 secs. You will have to reduce the aperture size ( be carful with this, a small aperture is the one with bigger f-stop number) to compensate the amount of light entering the camera. Also, if possible try to reduce the light in the room to an appropriate limit.
2. Set the camera to a two seconds timer to avoid shaking while you are pressing the shutter button.
3. Ask your subjects to pose in front of the camera, and instruct them not to make any movements at all to avoind blurring and then click the shutter button. Remember, it will take significant time( 30 secs) for the camera to take the picture.
4. At just about half of this period (15 secs), ask one of your subjects to quickly move out of the frame.
5. Wait for another half of the period (15 secs) and see the picture after your camera has done the magic.

What has happened during these 30 secs is pretty simple. You have exposed your subject on the sensor for half of the time and his background for another half of the time, because of which the camera will show you a mixture of both the pictures. It is important to chose a background where things aren't moving, and also not to hand hold the camera, and also to make sure your subjects stand absolutely still for the whole while.

If the exposure for the first picture doesn't work for you, try different settings. The picture above is 30" f/9 and ISO 100. Although 15 secs of shutter speed also works fine. Also try regulating the light in your room like drawing the curtains or using dim light ( eg. swtiching off your light and switching on the neighbouring room's light).

Go ahead, blow ghosts out of living people and have fun.