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.
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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 ~
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.
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| No Filter |
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| ND1000 Filter with 50 second exposure |
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| ND1000 Filter with 25 second exposure |
With much excitement, I look forward to more suitable conditions and happy times ahead with the ND Filters.
Absolutely breathtaking
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