Using neutral grad's with a 10-stop filter

[mashw]

Looking for a bit of advice on the best technique in using both a screw-in 10-stop filter and cokin-p neutral gradient filters. I'm completely new to using filters so I'm looking for the best way to go about exposing correctly for long exposure shots.

I'm assuming I meter the sky and ground/sea and figure out the difference and use the gradient filter closest to that. My confusion comes in when I'm trying to hold back the sky in long exposure shots where I need to screw in the 10-stop but then need to position the ngd in the cokin p holder along the horizon or skyline.

Is there some obvious way around this? I'm wondering whether using the 10-stop with live view preview would allow enough light in to position the ngd?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Barks]

A ten stop nd filter will cut out over 99.9% of the ambient light so unless you're shooting in some seriously bright light and want some very very long exposure times i'm not sure you'd need a nd grad filter too.

If you did need more then it would probably be a lot easier to just screw another circular nd filter in to the ten stopper you're already using. But that would of course further cut light from all areas not just the sky.

As for metering i'd say you could probably just meter the sky and set the exposure to something like 1 stop over average and that would be ok, but as with all exposure decisions it varies greatly with the conditions at the time. Best advice really is to try test shots and see what works best at the time of shooting.

 

[boyfalldown]

are you talking about using a graduated filter on top of a ten stopper, rather than an ND? - just from your description it sounds like it. In that case, if you really think you need it set the grad along the horizon