tried, tried again, then tried again, epic fail

L.Culley

L.Culley

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613
Name
Leon
Edit My Images
Yes
ok, ive seen some amazing photos of motior blur causing the water to look almost 'misty'
i have a pretty rare image close to me, where the cliffs have erroded away, a tree has fallen into the sea upright and although nothing grows in it (obviously) its still pretty amazing.
well i went down to the location a few days ago, a nice sunny day, blue skys (a rarety in my area) set up the tripod and started trying to capture this tree with the 'misty' effect... However..............

couldnt get anything to work, was either over exposed or under exposed

i tried changing the iso, the shutter speed, everything, no matter what the combination i couldnt get a single image to show anything other that pure black or pure white......

is it possibly to get that 'misty' look in sunny weather or do you need a dark scene???

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Leon
 
You need an ND filter, a sturdy tripod and and some knowledge of exposure/aperture etc.

To get misty water, you need a shutter of at least a second. This means that a lot of light will be hitting the sensor, causing the white image. To counter act this you need a small aperture, say f/8. Even still on a normal day, this will still overexpose, hence why you need an ND filter, to effectively act as sunglasses to cut out the light even more.

The darker the ND filter, the longer the exposure time will have to be.
Another option is to go back at dusk and try again, but you still may find it overexposes without and ND filter on.
 
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sounds like a daft thing but.... whats an ND filter..... soz im a total noob
 
lmgculley said:
sounds like a daft thing but.... whats an ND filter..... soz im a total noob
Click to expand...

ND= Neutral Density, either graduated or full ND.

Misty water is often achieved with a 10 stop filter (a full ND). Lee Filters make the Big Stopper and the German manufacturer B+W make the popular ND110. Neither are particularly cheap, but this is what you'll need.

b&w%20filter.jpg


Rgds
 
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lmgculley said:
sounds like a daft thing but.... whats an ND filter..... soz im a total noob
Click to expand...

It's basically a dark piece of glass that you put in front of your lens to lessen the amount of light that hits the sensor. That allows you to do longer exposures without over-exposing.
 
ND means Neutral Density, which effectively means reduces the amount of light entering the camera, you will see generally see 3 commonly in photographic shops which are

ND2 which means a 1 stop Neutral density which is half the amount of light coming in
ND4 which means a 2 stop neutral density which is a quarter
ND8 is a 3 stop ND which is an 8th the amount of light..

just means the less light coming in allows you to reduce your shutter speed and have a decent exposure, you will see on this forum a few times talking about 10 stop ND filters which give very very long exposures on bright sunny days.

to start simply drop your aperature to something like f8 to f11, iso to 100 and avoid sunny days, and those shall give you slightly slower exposure times, as TCR4x4 says try at dusk or dawn.
 
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so when buying an ND filter, how do i know what size i need to buy, again, this might sound totally daft but......
 
Hi Leon,

It seems odd that your exposures are either white or black and not somewhere inbetween. Did you get any exposures at all of the scene, although you might not have had the effect you wanted?

Regarding filter size, well there is two aspects to size...physical diameter and also strength as mentioned by KIKO/Ric. The strength varies because you might want to shoot in very bright midday light...or sunrise/sunset.

What lens do you have?
 
ive got a nifty fifty and a canon ef-s 18-135mm 3.5-5.6 is

can i assume i would need to get a 50mm one and/or 135mm one???
 
lmgculley said:
ive got a nifty fifty and a canon ef-s 18-135mm 3.5-5.6 is

can i assume i would need to get a 50mm one and/or 135mm one???
Click to expand...

No, the filter thread is diffrerent from the focal length.
Take the front end caps of the lens, and you will see the filter thread stamped on the inside of them, or it might also be on the lens. It will have a circle with a line through it and then a measurement in mm
 
i would just start off with the one for the 18-135mm as this gives the most versitility, the quick way of seeing which thread size you need is written on the back of the lens cap, for example it could say φ67 which is 67mm :D
 
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lmgculley said:
ive got a nifty fifty and a canon ef-s 18-135mm 3.5-5.6 is

can i assume i would need to get a 50mm one and/or 135mm one???
Click to expand...

I think the nifty is a 52mm thread and the 18-135 is a 72mm thread.

Generally buy the biggest filter for the biggest thread then you can get a stepup ring to fit the larger filter to the smaller lens.
 
From a quick google, the 18-135 is a 67mm thread and the 50 is a 52mm thread
 
once again you guys are a wealth of knowledge. many thanks
 
Aye, 67mm filter size.

It might be worth still getting a 77mm ND110. This way you can use a 67-77mm step up ring (relatively inexpensive) to attach it to your 18-135 and still have the option to fit it to a 77mm sized lens if you ever aquire one (usually a wide lens).

Alternatively, the LEE Big Stopper will fit any lens as long as you have the adaptor ring that fits the filter holder to the lens.
 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_16_rule
There is a rule of thumb called the Sunny f16 Rule which states that your shutter speed should be reciprocal of the ISO @ f16 for a correct exposure in bright sunlit conditions.

Those conditions sound simliar to what you describe and therefore assuming you shot close to those settings 1/100 shutter speed will be too fast for that effect.

If you wanted to get a shutter speed in those conditions at 1sec as mentioned by Tom you would need to find a reduction of 7stops.

You would want to consider how often you will shoot in these conditions and not just buy a filter to suit those one off condtions. I recently got a 3stop filter and will probably buy a 10stop to compliement it. I will adjust aperture and ISO to give me some extra stops either side when needed. I have a 77mm filter and will continue to buy the larger size filters then just buy the step up rings. I dont see myself ever owning a lens with a 82mm filter.


Andy
 
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the next time you are out an about and not necessarily going to do some longer exposures, try these settings, to see what kind of ND filter you might fancy first.

Av mode (aperature priority)
ISO 100
f11

and see what shutter speed the camera needs.
say if it comes out at 1/8

then ND2 will be 1/4
ND4 will be pretty much 1/2
ND8 will be a 1 second
and so on
and so on
......
 
It would (probably) do the job for having a play but with these things you get what you pay for...
 
Original Poster said:
You will end up disappointed with them.
Click to expand...

They are worth every penny you pay for em, good for learning about nd, bad for quality. Good thing is once you get to know about a nd filter, you can screw em to either side of your good one to protect it :thumbs:
 
kiko said:
ND means Neutral Density, which effectively means reduces the amount of light entering the camera, you will see generally see 3 commonly in photographic shops which are

ND2 which means a 1 stop Neutral density which is half the amount of light coming in
ND4 which means a 2 stop neutral density which is a quarter
ND8 is a 3 stop ND which is an 8th the amount of light..

just means the less light coming in allows you to reduce your shutter speed and have a decent exposure, you will see on this forum a few times talking about 10 stop ND filters which give very very long exposures on bright sunny days.

to start simply drop your aperature to something like f8 to f11, iso to 100 and avoid sunny days, and those shall give you slightly slower exposure times, as TCR4x4 says try at dusk or dawn.
Click to expand...

Does this mean the bigger the ND number the less light will be restricted? Similar to how the aperture numbers work?
 
ziggy©;3384655 said:
Does this mean the bigger the ND number the less light will be restricted? Similar to how the aperture numbers work?
Click to expand...

No, the bigger the ND number means greater light restriction. There are 2 main numeric grades used by various filter manufacturers.

ND2 = ND 0.3 (1 stop)
ND4 = ND 0.6 (2 stops)
ND8 = ND 0.9 (3 stops)
ND16 = ND 1.2 (4 stops)*
ND32 = ND 1.5 (5 stops)*
ND64 = ND 1.8 (6 stops)*
ND1000 = ND 3.0 (10 stops)*

The figures on the left generally denote full ND's, the figures on the left generally denote grads.

* not normally available as grads.
 
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Could I just add that this is a pretty advanced technique which involves some knowledge of photographic principles, and some pretty good quality kit.

It's unlikely that a newcomer would be able go down to the beach and come back with a masterpiece. Try some easier subject matter as well.:)
 
Do you know if I can get ND filters for a Nikon 14-24mm lens? If so, what filters do you recommend as I would probably be looking at getting a set. IE hard, soft or grad or a combination of all
 
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