Using Welding Glass as an ND Filter

theraven

theraven

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Jenna
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Well, I paid £1.50 for a piece, roughly equivalent to a 10 stop, but causes a terrible green hue, so B&W is pretty much necessary unless you can recover it.

I'm quite chuffed with this, first attempt on a murky evening, I imagine a bright sunny day would be better. Any tips for improvement?


Welding Glass ND filter test by Raven Photography by Jenna Goodwin, on Flickr
 
theraven said:
Well, I paid £1.50 for a piece, roughly equivalent to a 10 stop, but causes a terrible green hue, so B&W is pretty much necessary unless you can recover it.
Click to expand...

You should be able to set a custom white balance in your camera, its pretty easy, just put the welding glass on, point the camera at the sky. Take an exposure of around 30/40 seconds and make sure its oof. You should just have a horrible green blur. Then set a custom white balance from the resulting image in the camera menu and voila!

:)

P.s - nice shot :)
 
I was looking at buying some welding glass, I subscribed a while back to the "10 stop shots, show us what you got" thread and noticed yesterday you said that you are just going to stick it to the front of another filter, so you saved me starting another thread to ask you the question... So... To my question lol :).... Did you literally just glue it on to the front of a spare UV filter?

As I also concur that 10 stop filters (Especially Lee ones) are a bit out of my price range at this very moment. :D

Re. your shot I would be very happy with that for my first attempt (y) I have seen a severe green cast when I have had a little google about using welding Glass
 
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Just to add, I prefer the vast majority of these type shots in mono anyway so thats useful for me and hopefully yourself at the min :D
 
Hi,

Congrats on the purchase :) sooooo expensive huh? ;)

I could never get the custome WB to work (but I shoot raw so didn't matter much).

Have a look at this thread


Main gist is get something of interest that doesn't move, or flowing water, or a busy (people / things) moving street, set up - wait a minute or so.

Sunlight does help, but can also hinder if its in the shot...
 
Well I'm off out again tomorrow, so hopefully I will have more to add!

I didn't glue it to a filter, I thought an extra 2 pieces of glass would degrade the image too much, so I had a huge rubber lens hood that I bought for £2 on eBay and removed the thread screw ring that it was attached to and glued that to it! But I imagine a coupling ring or anything like that would work!

Or removing the glass from a UV filter and gluing that on?
 
Ahh that makes more sense, I thought you were literally going to glue it to the UV filter as you said in your post, thought to myself can imagine that being a bit of a nightmare

Cheers Jenna - Look forward to seeing some more (y)
 
I don't think my hands are that steady, I suppose though even if I do mess it up will be a lot cheaper than replacing a Lee Filter!

Just looking at the other thread when welding glass was first 'discovered' - It makes me laugh early on in the thread - The sudden upsurge in welding glass orders for that guy - I'd have DEFINITELY put my prices up :D
 
I squeezed a small amount of the sealant onto a piece of cardboard and then used a cocktail stick to apply the sealant to the edge of the ring. It's quite simple then to just lower the ring onto the glass, which forms a light proof seal, once dry.
 
Try not to use superglue, the fumes it gives off has a tendancy to damage the surface of the glass as i found to my cost, i used a cokin step-up ring and blue tak to make a light tight seal.
 
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