The invention discloses a method and a terminal for controlling overlong exposure, so as to solve the problems that an overlong exposure realization mode in the prior art is fixed, and the flexibility is poor. In the embodiment of the invention, after the terminal receives a photographing instruction, the current jitter offset is determined; the terminal compares the current jitter offset with a jitter threshold, and an exposure mode is selected according to the comparison result; and the terminal carries out exposure treatment according to the selected exposure mode. By adopting the mode of the embodiment of the invention, an applicable overlong exposure mode can be determined according to the current jitter offset of the terminal, the condition of a blurred image caused by adopting an improper exposure method can be effectively avoided, and the flexibility of the overlong exposure realization mode is improved.