The South Shore Tide Watch: December 2018

I have found three ways to grow or improve my photography ~ by always casting a critical eye over the many pics I take, by constantly trying out different techniques and by taking an inquisitive look at the results of others.

On Facebook, I am part of a group called “Scotland from the Roadside”, which every day offers up many great photographs of beautiful views and scenes in Scotland. About a week ago the photo below of Ben Nevis near Fort William in the Scottish Highlands by John Anderson of John Anderson Photography caught my eye. It was the smooth glass like water and obvious moving clouds which got me interested. I wrote a comment off to John and asked him what camera settings he used.

He replied ~ 30 second exposure, ISO 50, F18 with a ND Filter on” …… “ND Filter”, I had never heard of such a thing, he went to say that it was a ND1000 filter.

Ben Nevis near Fort William, Scotland

Armed with this introduction to something new, I went on to the inter-web and started reading all about ND Filters or to be more precise Neutral Density Filters ….

An ND Filter reduces the amount of light that passes through it and therefore, the amount of light that ends up on the camera’s sensor. It is essentially a darkened piece of glass that is designed not to change anything other than the quantity of light that passes through it. Other factors such as the colour of the light or polarization of the light are normally not affected.

This allows for creative effects such as using a wider aperture for depth of field effects or a longer shutter speed for time-based effects than would not be possible otherwise.

There are different types of neutral density filters which offer different strengths depending on how much light you want to block. This is most commonly measured by the number of “stops” of light the filter blocks, such as 3 stop filters, 6 stop filters, and 10 stop filters.

A stop is basically a measurement of the amount of light. If you increment by 1 stop, you are doubling (or halving) the amount of light. So for example, if you go from a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second to 1/125th of a second (twice as long), you are doubling the amount of light.

Longer exposure times can give some real dramatic and interesting affects, particularly with moving water especially waterfalls and capturing the motion (blurring) of clouds across the sky. Ignorant to the existence of ND Filters, I have tried in the past to do this, by reducing the exposure time, minimising the ISO setting and closing down the aperture, all with really terrible over-exposed results.

My only slight success came last year, see the blog ~ “Falls in fall” where I managed to catch the movement of a small waterfall at Rissers Beach with fair results, see ~

https://southshoretidewatch.blogspot.com/2017/10/falls-in-fall.html

So now it is time to introduce ND Filters into my life. As a Christmas present from my mother, I ordered a “Gobe”, 6-stop (ND64) and a 10-stop (ND1000) from Amazon tax free ~ I like “tax free”.!!!!

An additional absolute must requirement for long-exposure is a good sturdy tripod, fortunately I have one which I brought with me to Canada 30 years ago. Since its arrival here in the Frozen North, it has been constantly stored out of sight and somewhat neglected under stairs and crawl spaces, so before it could be used, it required a good clean and a little repair.

Yesterday having received the ND Filters much earlier than expected (you have to love Amazon …) I went along to the islands to try them out for the first time.

In conditions not really suited for the use of ND Filters, being completely bright, cloudless, with no wind therefore little water movement and a non-functioning frozen waterfall, I came back with my first experimental results. Note the effect of smoothing out the water, a nice feature for future photo compositions.

No Filter