Super Filter???

Aaron Bernard

Hi, Ive looked around and have not found what Im after so Im looking for ideas. I do a lot of photography around water / storm clouds and what not. I am going after long exposures during the day time to smooth out the water and streak the sky. What is out there that would act as a mega ND filter? Sometimes I stack two ND4's together but this seams like a cheesy way of getting low shutter speeds.

Im using a D200 so my ISO limit on the low side is 100. My main lens is the 17-55 with a min aperture of 22.

I really want to find something that will put me out in the 1 - 2 min range. Not in direct over head sunlight but on say a pretty cloudy day.
thanks for any info....

KA0TVO

Super filter
I'm no expert here ,thus free to give advice
Got to thinking I read a post on super long exposures in which the photographer would stand in various positions in his photo during the exposure.Seems to me the exposures were ten minutes or longer. May have been here or elsewhere, can't remember. Any way ran a search on this forum and found this:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=19098&highlight=long+exposure+times
It's a start. key word, long exposure
Hope this helps.

Aaron Bernard

Cool. Thanks for the link.

Im going to try the Stacking method. The D200 has a mult-exposure mode as well as a self timer. So I should be able to pop 10 shots off at regular intervals and stack them together all in camera. I'll post the results here...

USAIR

How about stacking two polarizers ?
Also there's 10x ND out there too
Shay has a good stacking method too

Fred

ziggy53

I've been meaning to try this:

http://www.astro-physics.com/index.htm?products/accessories/solar_acc/astrosolar

docwalker

With the D200 consider using the mirror up setting to reduce the vibration in the camera that will be created each time the shutter fires. It can help create sharper images. Think about it. If you open the shutter 10 times, that will be 10 times the camera will vibrate. I use the Mup setting when doing night photography as I do not have a remote for the D200 release yet.

pathfinder

US Air's suggestion of crossed polarizers may be the best bet - I've never tried to create moment long exposures in daylight.

Theoretically, two crossed polarizers should admit almost no light. You could always add a dense ND filter to the stack also. Mirror lock up will be essential if you plan on tripping the shutter more than once. If you only are using a long bulb exposure of minutes, mirror slap probably is not that significant.

LuckyBob

I actually tried the stacked polarizers not too long ago with my B+W Kaesemann and some old Hoya polarizer I had lying around, and as I made the combo darker, it also shifted the color towards purple. Anybody seen this happen? Is it as a result of two different types of glass?

claudermilk

If you want to stick with the ND filters, try running a search on B&H's site. I was poking around in that section last week & saw some pretty strong ND filters listed. They get real expensive real quick, but if that's what it takes to get the job done...


Here's what B&H lists as available from B+W:
BW101 (ND.3) (exposure adjustment = 1 stop)
BW102 (ND.6) (exposure adjustment = 2 stops)
BW103 (ND.9) (exposure adjustment = 3 stops)

BW106 (ND1.8) (exposure adjustment = 6 stops)
BW110 (ND3.0) (exposure adjustment = 10 stops)
BW113 (ND4.0) (exposure adjustment = 13 stops)
BW120 (ND6.0) (exposure adjustment = 20 stops)

Aaron Bernard

Wow. Great information everyone. Im headed out to shoot tomorrow. I'll try as many different combos as I can come up with to see what works best.

thanks!

USAIR

FastScan wrote:

Wow. Great information everyone. Im headed out to shoot tomorrow. I'll try as many different combos as I can come up with to see what works best.

thanks!

Let us know what you come up with

Fred

Aaron Bernard

I went out over the last few days and tried a few settings. I was shooting a multi-exposure image - 10 frames at an interval of 5 seconds each. Each frame was about 1 second long. I was shooting with 2 ND4 filters and a circular polarizer stacked. I was skeptical of this config and the results were not stellar. The water was very well blurred but so was the rest of the photo. The whole day I forgot to use the Mirror-Up mode which pops the mirror up before the shot is taken. Due to the mirror slap on the 10 frames and all the glass in front of my glass this is not the way to go.

Today I went out and set the camera to mirror-up mode, still shooting 10 frames every 5 seconds. This time I was shooting with just an ND4 and the polarizer. As the weather was overcast this gave me enough to get my shutter speeds back to 1 second each. The photo below shows the results. Im pretty happy with this config....

However! thanks to the info here Ive ordered the darkest ND filter available which should show up tomorrow. I think with the dark ND and maybe two or three stacks I'll be getting silky smooth water features during the day..

I should add that using multi-exposure with the interval timer on the D200 is really nice!

UncleJake

Nice shot, looks like you found a good combo.

FYI, Singh-Ray makes a vaiable ND filter. Something like 2 to 8 stops of adjustment...

http://www.singh-ray.com/varind.html

-UJ

USAIR

Nice shot and good job

Fred

devbobo

Nice work Chris.

I think you will like the filter you have ordered.

I have the BW110 (ND3.0) (exposure adjustment = 10 stops)

and I am very happy with it.

Mike Lane

So question about the extreme ND filters. Do you have to meter the scene without the filter and then just do the calculations to figure out your shutter speed? Or is there a better way of doing it?

David_S85

With my NDX400 filter, I meter without it mounted, then I switch to manual with the identical exposure. I readjust for 9 stops slower on the shutter, and then fire it. I haven't tried metering through it yet. It's brand new. The 77mm filter is also quite heavy.

Mike Lane wrote:

So question about the extreme ND filters. Do you have to meter the scene without the filter and then just do the calculations to figure out your shutter speed? Or is there a better way of doing it?

SloYerRoll

ziggy53 wrote:

I've been meaning to try this:

http://www.astro-physics.com/index.htm?products/accessories/solar_acc/astrosolar

Hey Ziggy,

Did you ever get around to this? I'd be willing to give it a shot if you gave some advise on how to execute..

Photoskipper

cheapest way
During my younger day (30+years ago), my friend taught me how to take the solar elipse with out damage my eyes and the camera.
Just go to the radiology department of any hospital, beg the radiolographer or technician to give a piece of overexposed or test X-ray film. Cut it to the size just bigger than the front filter. Slack it up and cover the lens. It worked for the old film camera in old days. But not sure how it works for today's highly sensitive digital camera. May want to try one day.

Unfortunately, nowadays most of the hospital use digital X-ray and not so easy to find the X-ray films.

It make sense to me as the overexposed X-ray film become totally black but yet have considerable light pass thru. Slack another few layer may reduce the light penetration further. The high quality film has reasonable uniform texture and does not distort the light too much.

The other way is to cross the polarizers to make cut 99.99% of light.

David_S85

Photoskipper wrote:

During my younger day (30+years ago), my friend taught me how to take the solar elipse with out damage my eyes and the camera.
Just go to the radiology department of any hospital, beg the radiolographer or technician to give a piece of overexposed or test X-ray film. Cut it to the size just bigger than the front filter. Slack it up and cover the lens. It worked for the old film camera in old days. But not sure how it works for today's highly sensitive digital camera. May want to try one day.

Unfortunately, nowadays most of the hospital use digital X-ray and not so easy to find the X-ray films.

It make sense to me as the overexposed X-ray film become totally black but yet have considerable light pass thru. Slack another few layer may reduce the light penetration further. The high quality film has reasonable uniform texture and does not distort the light too much.

The other way is to cross the polarizers to make cut 99.99% of light.

I wouldn't gamble my expensive sensor in my expensive camera body behind an expensive lens (essentially a magnifying glass) focusing on the sun through x-ray film, no matter how much sense it might make then or now.

Does it filter all damaging non-visible spectra? UV-a, UV-b? Does anyone for sure know?

Would I use it in front of my eyeballs for a real time view for seconds or minutes on end? No, I wouldn't.

tsk1979

Recently sombody posted some shots using a 10 stop ND filter that allowed 30 seconds exposure times in broad daylight, check that out!