Best laid plans

"Rydal Water" © Richard Evans Photography

I was in the Lake District last weekend - 2 days booked as a birthday treat which we'd planned to spend doing a bit of sight seeing and some photography. I was looking at it as a 60/40 photo trip - my wife was seeing it as an 80/20 shopping trip! That aside we were both looking forward to a couple of days away without the kids.

I've settled into a fairly efficient work pattern that's developed as I've progressed shooting landscapes - it seems to work ok for me an as the saying goes - fail to prepare - etc, etc. It usually goes like this:

Planning:
Plan in a location
Check the sun's details on "Photographer's Ephemeris"
Check the weather on the BBC site (seems the most reliable for the UK's random weather)
Note the times and where I need to be in the landscape
Make sure my equipment's ready

Shooting:
We've covered this previously - tripod, remote release, filters ready to go, plenty of memory cards - fire at will!

Processing:
Check through the Nikon raw files (NEF)
Convert everything to DNG files using "Adobe DNG Converter" (free to download from Adobe)
Process my selections in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS

It's a work path that seems to be working out and leaves little to chance.
Unfortunately - "little to chance" is sometimes all it takes!

The weekend started with an hour sat parked on the M6 while the Highway's Agency cleaned up a suicide - a bad omen in anyone's book.

Saturday we woke to drizzle and low cloud - not best. The forecast was for something similar so I can't really complain. I'd planned to be at Buttermere for sundown, but the day didn't pan out that way and my wife's idea of shooting a landscape seemed to take far less time that the reality. She lost her gloves, I gave her my gloves to reduce the moaning, she got bored and cold, I called it a day far in advance of the evening light and we went to get something to eat. We never got to Buttermere, so all my printouts of site and sun information went in the bin.

Sunday, determined to stay upbeat - I woke with enthusiasm for the planned shoot at Tarn Hows - (this is my wife's favourite lake so I was optimistic that there's be less boredom. I threw open the curtains to find snow - the weather forecast was for sun and cloud - the plan was screwed!
We decided to go to a site I'd spotted the day before on Rydal Water as it is more accessible and salvage some shooting time. I got to the site, set up and fired off just 12 frames before it scythed it down with sleety rain and we trudged back to the car defeated!

And that was it! The rain was in for the day and only stopped when we got back home - where it was fine. The best image of the weekend is above, I spotted this tiny island and tortured tree from the road and managed to capture it just as the weather turned. On a more positive angle - I spotted so many great potential shots, that I'll be spending a few more weekends in Cumbria as the year progresses.

You can't plan for every eventuality, but by covering those that you are able to, success, while not guaranteed, is more likely!

Fun with filters 6…

Neutral Density filters - the flavour of the moment!

"Verticals" © Richard Evans Photography

I'm going to round of the "Fun with filters" posts by devoting an entry to Neutral Density (solid ND) filters. If there's a single single photographic accessory that's capturing the imagination at the moment - it's the ND filter! Whether you love the dream-like slowed down feel of the images, or are sick to death of yet another milky sea - long exposure imagery is currently filling the pages of the photographic press and seem to be the most consistently highest voted images on 500px.

Essentially, an ND filter is a square of either black resin or glass, that sits in front of your lens and drops the amount of light that is able to enter it and get to the sensor. This opens up all sorts of daylight possibilities that were only available in very low light and will allow you to run really long exposure times during daylight hours, to produce stunning and unusual artistic effects.

As for the ND grad filters - solid ND filters are either measures in light stops (one stop - 10 stop) or with a number equivalent (ND2 - ND 1024), but unlike the grads, these filters are uniformly tinted to one strength. They are also slightly smaller as they don't need the up and down adjustability of the grads. The longer exposure times available then allow you to keep static items in pin sharp focus, while moving items like the sky or moving water, will be blurred. As the tints are neutral, the filter should (in theory) add no colour cast to your image.

In order to get the kind of smokey etherial effects that are so fashionable at the moment, the majority of long exposure fans are polarized around one single product - the Lee's filters "Big Stopper". There are plenty of other products out there, good and bad - but the big stopper does seem to be rightly popular due to it's combination of high image quality and the ability to offer really long 10 stop exposure times. They are however - extremely expensive! The filter is just over £100 and you will need a Lees holder that will run you about the same again when you add the adaptor ring - so it's really not an impulse buy!

I've shopped about and found that you can get Hitech filters that will fit a Cokin P holder, up to an equivalent density and at the moment I'm on the fence debating whether to spend £100 on one of these or bite the bullet and go with the guarantee of quality. It's a tough call! At present, I have a couple of ND8 filters and by stacking two of these up with an ND grad, I achieved the image above. The lake was fairly choppy, but the long exposure rendered it like polished concrete and gave an interesting effect. Obviously - using a single darker filter will offer better quality than stacking in 3, but it allowed me to experiment!

Pointing this kind of setup at the sea will or a fast moving waterfall, will offer you the best opportunity to capture a dramatic blur. Also, architecture images look fantastic with a blurred out sky filled with drama. These images catch the eye and captivate the imagination - it's no wonder everyone seems to be doing it! If you're into these kind of images, why not give it a go? You can get cheap Ebay versions to allow you to experiment, but these typically aren't available above ND8 and this really isn't dark enough to allow for the desired effect - you'll need to stack a couple up together. The cheapest decent quality 8, 9 or 10 stop filters I've seen are from Hitech and they go from around the £100 mark to fit a Cokin P holder - the larger sizes are more expensive.

Using the filters, requires you to work in a certain way – as they're so dark, looking through the viewfinder to focus is near impossible - so here are a couple of tips to make things easier:

Set up your gear and compose your image as usual - tripod shooting is the only option with exposures this long! Focus your image with only the filter holder attached, so you get everything pin sharp. Then switch to manual focus to lock it down.

Add your filter and start shooting - referencing the histogram of your images so you can adjust if needed. With an exposure over 30 seconds you'll need to switch to manual and select "bulb mode" to get the correct exposure time. 

Make sure that "noise reduction" is switched on if you have it, as a long exposure can get pretty noisy without this.

Practice will improve results, so start experimenting!

Budget ND idea…

I did recently read a great budget article showing how you can use the glass lens from a welding mask, to replicate the 10 stop effect - the great thing about this is welding lenses are REALLY cheap! I searched Ebay quickly and found that you can get a box of 10 for £3.50, so 35p each. They're an odd size, so they won't fit any filter holders, and the glass is green to protect the welders eyes from the flare, but you can get around both these issues:

I've been thinking about the neatest way to attach the glass to a lens. My initial idea was to glue a spare adaptor ring to the glass with epoxy glue. This would be secure but may be difficult to screw the whole lot on in the field. I'm now thinking that the best route would be to buy in another cheap Cokin P holder and adapt this by sawing out the filter slots. Then, get one of the lenses cut at a glass works to the 84mm width and glue that into the adapted holder. A holder is a few pounds, glass cutting can't cost more than £5 (and I'll have 9 spares!) and you'll end up with a useable system that isn't difficult to use! The glass should be reasonable quality too as it's manufactured as an optic.

The green cast from the glass will give your images a strange colour cast, but this can be corrected if you shoot in raw. Better still - as this is a cheap experimental gig - why not shoot your images with the intention of converting them into greyscale monos? The green cast makes no difference whatsoever when you convert to mono, so you can get creative fine art landscapes images for under £20 - maybe under £15.

Now I've written it down - I'm definitely going to give this a go! If it works out ok - I'll post up a "how to" so you can see how to make up your own.

To finish, I found this really comprehensive guide to all things ND, so if you want to get a more expansive overview, click through and give it a go:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/peterh111/journal/4421304-the-ultimate-guide-to-neutral-density-filters 

 

As usual - if you're enjoying these posts, do let me know with a comment - I'd love to hear from you! Keep shooting!

Fun with filters 5…

Neutral Density Grads

 

As I mentioned in the previous posting, neutral density filters are simply dark filters that are used to control the amount of light that enters the lens, without introducing any colour cast to the final exposure - hence "neutral". In this post we're going to explore ND graduate filters in a bit more detail and how to use them to your advantage.

A graduated filter is basically a piece of glass or acrylic resin that is dark at one end graduating to clear at around the mid point. As mentioned before, this is the ideal tool for controlling light in areas such as the sky, to balance the overall exposure and prevent it from blowing out. This can be controlled by bracketing and combining exposures to make an image with the best exposure for each area, but by using an ND grad filter, you can control your exposure in-camera and achieve the results you want without a lot of post-processing in photoshop.

ND grad filters are available as screw in or slot in filters, but by the nature of these filters work, the screw in versions are really not ideal. The graduation typically ends across the diameter of the circle and this limits your compositions so you have to keep the horizon line straight through the centre if the frame. Ideally, you'd want this to fall on a line following the rule of thirds, and the filter doesn't allow for this. A slot in filter system allows you to drop and lift the filter to ideally suit your composition. Plus, you can combine more than one graduate for a more complex effect. The filters also add more definition to cloud forms in your skies and boost up the colour, although not in the same way a circular polarizer would.

Grad filters are available as hard and soft grad versions - in use this basically means that, although the tinted areas stop at the same point, in the soft grad version, the gradation of the tint to clear is over a larger area and the hard grads taper to clear very quickly in a small area. In use, this means that a hard grad is ideal for use where you have a large flat horizon that you can sit the grad on - such as a sea scape. Soft grad filters are a bit more forgiving and you can use them on more uneven horizon lines without too much trouble. I've read a lot of magazine articles on ND filters and most people suggest that the hard grads are easiest to use for the novice - I only have soft grads as I think they're more flexible in use and I've not had any problems composing with them. In fact, the softer graduation curve means that they're more forgiving.

 Here's an example of one of my images where I've deployed a 2 stop ND grad (ND4) to hold back the sky areas against the foreground. As this was shot into a hazy sun, the filter was essential to stop the shy from just blowing straight out to white in the centre.

This was taken using a set of really cheap ND filters I bought on E-bay and I didn't realize how brown the filter tint was until I purchased a better quality set of replacements recently. That said, I like the colour cast it's put in the sky - it was early morning and the light was quite golden anyway, so it's resulted in this desaturated "tobacco" colour that's not unpleasant!

This is one thing to bear in mind when buying any ND filters - there are loads of cheap versions available, and these are great to practice with to fine tune technique, but they may not be manufactured to the same standards and calibration as a more expensive branded filter. Also, the resin sheets may not be the best optical quality. I first noticed about a month ago, that my cheap ND grads were introducing some weird patterns into the sky that look like banding. I put this down to a combination of the tint and maybe inferior acetate and replaced all my filters for Kood branded versions, that are far more "neutral" in colour. I used the ND4 grad on the image at the top to capture the dawn light 2 days ago. The light was so low at that time of the morning that even a relatively light grad delayed the exposure long enough to show the motion blur in the clouds, and added a nice atmosphere. You can see that the pinkish colour cast has gone and the blue pre-dawn light is more evident - I wanted the shot to look cold (it was bloody freezing at 5.45 am setting up).

Here are a couple of quick pointers for using ND grads in the field:

• Keep your filters to hand, but safely stored. They pick up dust really easily due to static and are fingerprint magnets. I tend to take one filter out at a time and keep the rest packaged up in a wallet in a pocket or my bag. Try and hold the filters by the edges to keep your fingers off them.

• Always blow the filters and your lens front over to make sure you get as much dust off as possible. Remember to do both sides of the filter so there's no dust trapped on the lens side.

• Always slot in your filters starting with the slot nearest to the lens front - then if you want to add a second, slide that in front. Quality may be affected if you add 3 or more filters at one time.

• Compose your shot and focus with the filter holder attached but nothing slid into the slots. This makes it easier to get a correct focus for your image. Once you have this how you like - switch to manual focus to lock it in place. If you leave autofocus on, the camera will keep trying to focus on the filter and defocussing itself (leading to much swearing until you get with the program). For slot in filter systems - manual focus is king!

• Try not to drop a filter, especially on the beach. If you do drop a grad, don't put it back into the holder as it will make that dirty and probably scratch it up as you slide it in. I dropped one into the snow once which was not quite as tricky, but still meant that I had to stop using it for that shoot as you can get drying marks.

• If there's any moisture in the air (fog, rain or sea spray) this can sit on the filter front and result in strange light or dark dots appearing in your image. These will have to be cloned out, so it's good practice to check the filter front regularly to make sure it's clean.

• Be sure that the filter is slotted all the way across the lens as even the clear end of the filter sheet will leave an unpleasant line across your image if it's not slid down enough.

There we have it! If you're thinking about getting a set of ND grad filters, hopefully this has given an overview of how they can aid your exposure and how to best use them. I really like working with them and think they add more to an image than simply bracketing and merging exposures can offer. If image quality is a concern - go for Lees products (if it's good enough for the world's best landscape photographers it'll be fine for the rest of us). If you want to try them out without breaking the bank, try some cheap Cokin P sized versions for a few quid and if you like using them - buy better quality replacements that will fit the same holder (Cokin, Kood, Hitech - they're all good). Give them a go - you won't turn back!

If you're enjoying these posts why not let me know by following or leaving me a comment - I'd love to hear from you! Keep shooting

Fun with filters 4…

Neutral density filters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are probably the most popular effects filters used by landscape photographers at the moment and are loved and loathed in equal measure. If you look at a site like 500px.com and check out the most popular images, the landscapes making the top of the list are all heavily filtered to give a dramatic look to the sky or slow down the exposure for a misty ethereal sea. 

I’m going to show my hand early here – I’m an ND filter user (saying it makes me feel kinda dirty). I like the options they offer for creative experimentation and I’m in the fan camp when it comes to the long exposure images – I think they give the opportunity to introduce “Mood” to an image and convey more of a feel for the location. For every fan of these images however, there are just as many who really don’t like them.

I recently read a magazine article where a photographer laid out his case against the use of ND filters, saying that he’d seen enough “pink skies and milky seas” and that we should stop using filters as “Ansel Adams didn’t use them, so they’re basically a superfluous visual trend”. I have a colleague who falls into this camp, saying that you can adjust the exposure of your skies in photoshop, so why put a piece of Perspex in front of an expensive  lens? I think he has a point, but in reply I think, not everyone has his level of photoshop skill to correct their images in processing and many prefer to get their exposure right in-camera to start with.

Whichever side of the fence you fall down on, here’s a quick rundown on what these filters can offer and where to use them.

Neutral Density (ND) filters are basically used to alter the amount of light that enters the front of your lens – think of them as sunglasses for your lens. They’re called Neutral Density because they are designed to lower the light entering the lens without adding any detrimental colour cast to your image – hence “Neutral”. In practice – many do alter the colour, especially the cheaper non branded versions, so this is something to bear in mind when buying.

There are 2 basic types of Neutral Density (ND) filter – Solid filters and graduate filters. Almost all ND filters are manufactured from resin sheets and are then usually dyed by hand to the amount needed for a specific strength of filter. There are some glass versions but most manufacturers now use optical resin as it's much safer. The down side to this is they can scratch really easily, and so need to be handled carefully and stored well to keep them in good condition. The graduated filters are dip dyed by hand to get the graduated effect. It's part science - part craft.

Neutral Density Grads

How many times have you shot an image outdoors only to find that your exposure either blows out the sky or makes the foreground too dark? This is due to the dynamic range of the light in your image being far greater that your camera sensor can capture. It will be able to properly expose for the sky or the ground but the stretch between the two is too much for it to cover. Ordinarily, the way to compensate for this is to take a few bracketed exposures so you get a good image for both sky and ground and then combine these with image editing software to make a better exposed single image – this is a simplistic form of HDR image (High Dynamic Range).

If you want to improve your image in-camera then this is where an ND grad can help. It will allow you to reduce the brightness of the sky so the foreground can now appear lighter – giving a more balanced overall exposure. As an added bonus effect, a grad filter can throw more definition into the sky, adding more drama to clouds. There are 2 typed of graduated ND filter generally available – hard or soft grad. The difference is obvious when they are put side by side with the hard grad tapering off very quickly to clear and the soft grad having a more gentle graduation to clear. I’ll look at these in more detail in the next posting.

Solid ND filters

These are used more as a creative effect filter, where you reduce the overall light entering the lens, to enable a longer exposure time during daylight hours. This will allow you to blur moving objects while leaving fixed objects pin sharp, so this is the filter you want for that image of a jetty sticking out into a sea of fog.

In the main – solid ND grads are the filters that you either love or hate and the one that divides opinion the most. I like them and they are great fun experimenting with – I can see this kind of image falling out of favour sooner rather than later as tastes change and the next big thing catches people’s imagination. They’re really great for moving water, so ideal for rocky streams where the water movement can be altered creatively. Also, you can use them for architectural images where there are a lot of crowds – make the exposure long enough and the people will drop out leaving just the building, of maybe a couple of interesting ghosted figures – all great fun to work with!

I’m going to do a post on each of the 2 types of ND filters in more detail as there’s a lot of ground to cover, but before winding this up, I’ll give an overview of how ND filters are calibrated, and what the figures mean.

How are they calibrated?
 
When looking to buy any Neutral density filters, they will have some kind of calibration system to let you know how dark they are. This is where a lot of confusion arises as there are 2 ways that manufacturers list their product and it’s confusing if you’re unfamiliar with them. ND filters are either calibrated with a number or by the number of f/stops of light they reduce the exposure by. The 2 systems do match up:

1 stop ND = ND 2

2 stop ND = ND 4

3 stop ND = ND8
4 stop ND = ND16
5 stop ND = ND32
6 stop ND = ND64
7 stop ND = ND128
8 stop ND = ND256
9 stop ND = ND512
10 stop ND = ND1024

So for example – if you see a 3 stop ND filter and an ND8 filter for sale, they’re the same thing (confusing and easy to buy the wrong thing or 2 of the same thing – good times!)

We’ll wind things up there for this posting – I’ll be looking at ND grads in more detail in the next post and solid filters after that, so look out for those if you’re interested in experimentation with these creative tools!

If you're enjoying these posts why not let me know by following or leaving me a comment - I'd love to hear from you! Keep shooting

Fun with filters 3…

Slot in filter systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following on from the last post on CPL filters, I'm going to look at slot in square filter systems, and how they're used with your lenses. There are several square filter systems on the market (and countless cheap imitation filters made to fit the holders). The main differences are in the filter sizes as one manufacturers filters may not necessarily fit into the holder of another. 

The actual filters themselves are manufactures from high grade optical quality acetate resin sheets (not glass). These are then dyed to suit the requirement. Quality will vary greatly with price as usual.

The big players in the slot in system market are:

Cokin
This is a French company with a huge range of creative filters available. They have 4 sizes of system available:

• Cokin A series (67mm wide, for compact cameras)

• Cokin P series (84mm wide, designed for DSLRs. There are standard and wide angle holders available - on the wide angle versions the number of filter slots is reduced from 3 to 1 to help with vignetting.

• Cokin Z-Pro series (100mm wide - also designed for DSLR use, the larger filter size makes them more suited to wider lenses)

• Cokin X-Pro series (130mm wide, for video & cinema use)

Cokin filters are very reasonably priced, so offer a good first route into this kind of system. Their holders are robust but cheap and as a bonus, many other manufacturers work to the same sizes, so your options are plentiful. The P series filter  system is an excellent route into working with filters - it's the system I chose based on cost and availability. There are many cheap Chinese knock-off versions available at a fraction of the cost of the genuine product and – while the quality is in no way as good, it offers a good way to experiment without lashing out a lot of cash. I initially bought some filters and a holder from a Hong Kong supplier on Ebay – the quality wasn't fantastic, but I was able to practice with the system for under £20. Now that I have some experience under my belt - I've replaced all my filters for the more expensive and far better quality genuine parts, to ensure better image quality.

Kood
These are manufactured in the UK and are a good quality, well priced alternative to Cokin. Their filters are made to fit into Cokin P and Z-Pro holders, so they're a great upgrade - I've recently bought Kood replacements for all my cheap import filters.

Hitech
Again, these are manufactured in 2 sizes and to a good level of quality. They do however list the smaller size as 85mm (the larger is 100mm) - so I've not tried to fit these into a Cokin P holder. To avoid damaging either, I'd suggest buying a Hitech 85 holder just in case. One of the great things about Hitech's offering, is that they manufacture a much bigger range of solid Neutral Density filters, so it's a good cost effective alternative to the Lees "big stopper" filter, that's extremely popular. If you're looking to try that milky sea, super long exposure thing but are frightened off by the cost of Lee's product, Hitech is a good route for you.

Lee's Filters
These are universally lauded to be the BEST quality slot in filters that money can buy. Manufactured in the UK, sized at 100mm width, they're used by many of the top UK based landscape and travel photographers and have a deserved reputation as the best. The price on the other hand is extremely high and for this reason alone I wouldn't advocate this as a first route into working with filters. Even the most basic beginners sets on offer are very expensive and the filter holder alone is £55. They also don't offer the kind of range of creative effects filters that Cokin produce. That said, they are the best, so if money's no object - you will not go far wrong sticking with Lee's products. They've also recently introduced a smaller system (like Cokin A) for use with compact cameras, but it's incredibly expensive for what's offered. At over £100 you get only the holder and a single ND grad filter. Hopefully the price will come down if they become more popular and more filters are available, but it's difficult to justify the price.


One final point before winding up for this posting - we'll take a quick look at the holder systems and the way that the filters slot into them.

Universally, these holder systems, regardless of brand, are fitted to the front of your lens using a threaded adapter ring. this makes the systems enormously flexible, as you can buy rings cheaply to fit all your lenses, and you will only need the one holder. The rings are offered in all the standard lens diameters and the front holder section slots onto this, allowing it to be rotated so you can flip the camera over for a portrait shot or use a filter at an angle to suit your subject.

The front of the holders have one or more slots, that the square filters are then slotted into. This allows you to fine tune the position vertically - for example, to position a neutral density grad on the horizon. Also, you have the option to use more than one filter in combination to give an even bigger range of effects.

Top tip: placing a dark filter in front of your lens will confuse your camera's auto-focus system causing it to try and focus on the filter, so I find it easier to either switch to manual focus to begin with, or compost your shot and focus with no filters in the holder - then switch to manual to lock the focus and slot in the filters to suit. This prevents the camera from going out of focus when you depress the shutter.

Cokin holders are incredibly cheap and you can buy non-genuine versions for between £1 and £5, with individual adapter rings around the same price. Alternatively, there are whole sets available on Ebay with the holder and all the adapter rings. This is good if you have a lot of lenses and want the option to put the holder on them all. I originally bought a single 52mm ring for my kit lens and when I upgraded to a better wide angle, just bought a couple of 77mm ring adapters for that and used the same holder.

Other system holders will vary in price all the way up to the Lee's filter. Kood holders are just copies of the Cokin version, and are also cheap. Hitech's holder is more in line with Lee's. This is a more complex composite system where you can dismantle the holder to add or remove the slot holders to suit, which explains the higher cost.

Whichever system you favour, slot in filters can offer you a huge range of creative opportunities - far greater and more flexible that screw in filter types, so I heartily recommend them if you're looking to get more from your photography and develop your technique and style.

In the next post I'll be looking at Neutral Density filters and how you can use them to balance your exposures and get great artistic effects.


If you're enjoying these posts why not let me know by following or leaving me a comment - I'd love to hear from you! Keep shooting