Using A Lee Big Stopper - Dissapointment

[IanD]

Morning all,

I spent a day in Portsmouth on Saturday wandering around taking anything that interested me.

Although a pretty bog standard subject matter, I wanted to take a shot of the pier using my newly acquired Lee Stoppers, just to get a feel for them.

I'd done all the obligatory youtube viewing and did as per below:

Took test shot to get settings
Set ISO to 100, aperture to f/11 (Canon 5DmkIII with Canon 16-35mm f/4L lens)
At 1/60th, se that into the Lee Filters app choosing the correct stopper and got a 15 second setting.
Put the stopper in place
Set lens to manual
Set 2 second timer
Covered the eye piece
Took the shot

This image then came out very, very dark, which surprised me.

I then changed to 30 seconds, and this image came out dark as well, but not as bad as the other.

I didn't pursue this anymore as I thought I must be doing something wrong, but just didn't know what.

The conditions were quite grey and bland and there may have been some mist around (although I didn't see it), but the processed image was not crisp at all, there just seemed lots of grain or noise in it.

I've nowhere to host the raw file for anyone to look at and I can put the processed image on Flickr later, but wondered if there is anything glaringly obvious, that i've missed.

Would a grey day only offer grainy images at that shutter speed?

Am I expecting too much?

Thanks all for reading (if you are still awake).

 

[Jase]

Thanks all for reading (if you are still awake).

No problem

This does sound more like a user error if I'm honest but question is what.. Noise wouldn't be caused by the filter but more likely the camera or the post processing later... if you are trying to recover a dark image then noise will be added.

I know you said you can't post the RAW but could you maybe post the EXIF data ?

There is a couple of things that you have said that don't make sense though or needs clarification.

Where did you get the 1/60th from?
You said that you put the lens in Manual but only after putting the big stopper on.... not ideal
I'm assuming you are shooting in full Manual and not Aperature Priority (or whatever canon call it)..... if not will be your issue.
You said that at 30 seconds it still looked dark, why didn't you increase ISO and take another shot if you needed to keep to 30 seconds.

 

[riddell]

Simple. You have the wrong settings.

If its too dark, then you have a few options, raise the shutter speed, open up the aperture or raise the ISO, or a combination of any of the above.

Forget youtube and forget the app. Just meter, then do you calculations, and dial in the right settings. If you get it wrong, then adjust. Keep adjusting till you get it right.

 

[joetheslug]

Hmmm, I think 1/60 sounds a tad fast for the conditions. The camera initially should be in AV to take a reading or shot. The camera then sets the shutter speed. You had it in manual.

Once you have taken the reading, reset the camera to manual and off you go.

I reckon it was more like 2s in AV. This then equates to 32 min on a big stopper.

Out pops the Small Stopper and it now reads 2m on the scale.

Hope this helps.

 

[IanD]

Thanks for the reply Jase, and by your reply, I already feel like i'm getting somewhere if someone is finding the errors i've made.

I'll have a look at the EXIF data and put up later when I get in from work.

The 1/60th just came by taking a test shot and that's the shutter speed I saw in the viewfinder

Why would it have made a difference switching the lens to manual either before or after putting the stopper in place, if no settings had changed and I hadn't depressed the shutter button since the initial time to get shutter speed?

Could you please explain this issue with shooting in either manual or Aperture Priority, why it would make a difference if the lens had been switched to manual to take the final image? I understand the use of camera manual mode (although don't always use it) but not in relation to this scenario

Apologies if these questions seem dumb but I assumed i'd got things right whilst there

 

[keef32]

Not being an expert on long exposures, I'd just assume that the exposure wasn't calculated correctly and it needed a bit longer.

 

[joetheslug]

Thanks for the reply Jase, and by your reply, I already feel like i'm getting somewhere if someone is finding the errors i've made.

I'll have a look at the EXIF data and put up later when I get in from work.

The 1/60th just came by taking a test shot and that's the shutter speed I saw in the viewfinder

Why would it have made a difference switching the lens to manual either before or after putting the stopper in place, if no settings had changed and I hadn't depressed the shutter button since the initial time to get shutter speed?

Could you please explain this issue with shooting in either manual or Aperture Priority, why it would make a difference if the lens had been switched to manual to take the final image? I understand the use of camera manual mode (although don't always use it) but not in relation to this scenario

Apologies if these questions seem dumb but I assumed i'd got things right whilst there

You need to put the camera in AV so it can take a measurement of the light to calculate the shutter speed.

You then need to switch to manual so the camera doesn't over ride your settings based on the Lee app.

If you have a light meter you would just take a reading...but most people don't so you have to let the camera do it...

 

[Ian W]

If your shutter speed should be circa 15s, is it an option to put it into aperture priority mode (with the filter on) and see what you get?

I know my Fuji is fine to do this up to 30s so unless I'm going higher I'll just let the camera do its thing and all I need to worry about is where to focus. Long as you're focusing manually before adding your filter, you should be fine.

 

[IanD]

Simple. You have the wrong settings.

If its too dark, then you have a few options, raise the shutter speed, open up the aperture or raise the ISO, or a combination of any of the above.

Forget youtube and forget the app. Just meter, then do you calculations, and dial in the right settings. If you get it wrong, then adjust. Keep adjusting till you get it right.

Thanks for the reply Paul. I think it might be me that's 'simple' ;(

In the situation, I was attempting to totally blur the water, just as a tester for my first use of the filter and the 1/60th was what I got whilst focusing on the pier, so as far as I knew, that was my metering.

I guess, like you say, maybe I should just forget the app and move on to metering properly. I could have got the shutter release out and switched to bulb mode, but thought I must be doing something wrong.

 

[IanD]

Hmmm, I think 1/60 sounds a tad fast for the conditions. The camera initially should be in AV to take a reading or shot. The camera then sets the shutter speed. You had it in manual.

Once you have taken the reading, reset the camera to manual and off you go.

I reckon it was more like 2s in AV. This then equates to 32 min on a big stopper.

Out pops the Small Stopper and it now reads 2m on the scale.

Hope this helps.

You've read my signature right? All the gear, no idea

I'm learning all the time, and looks like i've just learned a whole lot more. Joe, thanks for this - i'll have another go and see where it gets me.

Everyone - thanks so much for your input - that's why I love this forum - educating me - so helpful

 

[Jase]

Thanks for the reply Jase, and by your reply, I already feel like i'm getting somewhere if someone is finding the errors i've made.

I'll have a look at the EXIF data and put up later when I get in from work.

The 1/60th just came by taking a test shot and that's the shutter speed I saw in the viewfinder

Why would it have made a difference switching the lens to manual either before or after putting the stopper in place, if no settings had changed and I hadn't depressed the shutter button since the initial time to get shutter speed?

Could you please explain this issue with shooting in either manual or Aperture Priority, why it would make a difference if the lens had been switched to manual to take the final image? I understand the use of camera manual mode (although don't always use it) but not in relation to this scenario

Apologies if these questions seem dumb but I assumed i'd got things right whilst there

Switching to lens to manual is only locking the focus. Using aperture priority is letting the camera make the decisions for you, which in most situations it does a great job. However when you're getting a bit creative it hits limits ie 30 seconds. If you've locked in say ISO100 and f11 then the only thing it can do is adjust shutter speed and that has a cap in AP. If you don't have a shutter release cable to shoot in Bulb mode then you have to consider that and make other adjustments ie raise the ISO or change the aperture (there are other ways in other cameras but lets not complicate it).

The noise that you are talking about is (based on above) introduced in post processing from you trying to recover the image.

 

[IanD]

Many thanks Jase - starting to make a lot more sense now

Thanks for going into real depth and helping me understand mate

 

[simonkit]

My experience is just because Lee sell it is a 10stop don't necessarily take that as read.... mine is actually 12 stops to get the correct exposure so it just sounds to me as though you need to experiment a little more, in this case it's best to use manual settings and dial in the difference yourself

Simon

 

[gad-westy]

My experience is just because Lee sell it is a 10stop don't necessarily take that as read.... mine is actually 12 stops to get the correct exposure so it just sounds to me as though you need to experiment a little more, in this case it's best to use manual settings and dial in the difference yourself

Simon

This^

Reading some of the replies here, I think things are getting a little confused. If you took a test shot at 1/60 and you judged it to be 'properly' exposed, then you are quite right that 10 stop filter should then translate to 15 second exposure if you change no other settings. That should then give you a similar result.

It doesn't matter what metering mode, or whether it's AV, manual exposure or anything else. So what you're almost certainly seeing, as Simon says, is that you have a filter that needs more than 10 stops of adjustment to match your base exposure. This is pretty normal variance with dense filters. All you really need to do is get out and try a controlled test to establish just how many stops your filter is blocking and use that figure in future, either in your head or via an app.