does anyone have experience and/or recommendations with regards to ND filters and daytime long exposures?

I love taking landscape photos, and recently got frustrated with the inability to take a long exposure during bright sunlight to capture moving water and/or clouds. Does anyone have any experience with the best way to capture these shots without over exposing?I've already tried small apertures, low iso, and still over expose.I assume obviously the ND filters will dothe trick, but are there any other techniques used? Also, I was looking at a B+W ND filter that has 10 stops. I don't know if 10 is overkill or not though. Below is a link to the filter.


http://www.adorama.com/BW77ND1X.html?utm_source=rflaid65006&utm_mediu m=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Other&utm_term=Ot her


thanks for anyone's thoughts and suggestions in advance!

I don't have any experience taking long exposures in daylight but fortunately photography exposure is very simple mathematics. i.e. You own a 7D so DLA begins to effect image quality at aperture values greater than f6.3. Let's for simplicity sake pick f8.0. DLA should not be too bad there. This will most likely yield the greatest DOF for the sharpet image. Use DOF master to determine the correct hyperfocal distance to maximize the depth of field in the image your trying to make. I believe, (please someone jump in and correct me if I'm wrong) that ISO 100 will yield the greatest dynamic range for your camera. ISO 50, if available will help get your shutter speed down but you'll give up some dynamic range do to in-camera Raw numerical manipulation. OK, so, you've got ISO 100 @ f8.0 and on a bright sunny day that yields a shutter speed of somewhere around 1/250. ND filters simply limit the light in values ofstops. Add a1 stop ND filter and get 1/125, 2 = 1/60, 3= 1/30, 4 = 1/15, 5 = 1/8, 6 = 1/4, 7 = 1/2, 8 = 1, 9 = 2, 10 = 4 sec. Is 4 secs long enough? ISO 50 will give you 8 secs, add some more aperture (post sharpen) and at f11 you will get 16 secs, at f16 32 secs......


So, a 10 stop ND filter is not unreasonable. Slower is harder, faster is easier.


Hope this helps..

Just for your info: there are also fader ND filters. I know the LCW ND filter MarkII 77mm goes from ND-2 until ND-400 (2-8 stops). I have no clue how quality is of these ones vs normal constant ND filters.


I don't have any experience so someone else must step in here. But it seems quite logical to me how they work.


Good luck,


Jan

I have both the B+W 103 (3-stop) and the 110 (10-stop) that you linked. For most moving water shots, light trails at night, etc., the 3-stop is sufficient. I also sometimes stack aB+W KäsemannCPL (Slim mount) on the 3-stop for a total of ~4.75 stops plus the ability to cut reflections (great for waterfalls). The 10-stop allows some nice creativity with very long daytime exposures. Great for moving clouds, for example, or to blur out moving people near a popular architectural feature. Do keep in mind that for the 10-stop you'll need a good tripod, you'll need to set the focus before putting on the filter, and you'll need to set exposure manually.

10 stop would be a good start. I was using a 3 stop ND for video work and outdoors that barely got me down to 1/50, iso 100, f/2.8. However many times that wasn't dark enough to maintain the shutter speed.

I have the 58mm LCW Fader ND Mark II. The image quality takes a very small hit when using the Fader ND, but certainly not enough to keep me from using it. Autofocus doesn't seem to work well when using the Fader ND (no matter what the opacity is), so I use a tripod, manual focus, and Live View with 5X (or 10X) magnification.


Here are some shots where I've used the 58mm Fader ND Mark II:



http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4046/...532cf2d11a.jpg



http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4074/...ec55714e1c.jpg


For all my pics using the Fader ND Mark II, click here.

Hi,


I quite like the waterfall experience but the brightness and contrast issues always play havoc during open sunlight and from where I am from, there is alot of sun. I have had success using low ISO, a 0.6 (?) ND filter and stacking a polariser on as well. I get the water trails and the look after trial and error. Water spray is something else!





Good luck

thanks everyone for your replies! I think that a 10 stop will be the best one for my needs based on your guys responses! I do already have a good tripod and fully plan on using it for the long exposures. Thanks again everyone!

You're going to have a blast. I do a lot oflong exposures (timelapse photography with 180-degree shutter). One of the difficulties you may encounter is infrared contamination in the form of reduced contrast and shifted colors. Normal ND filters only block visible light, so a 10-stop ND filter increases the amount of infrared light by 1024 times! Normal amounts of infrared are easily blocked by the sensor's IR filter, but at some point it's not enough. The only solution I know of is to use "hot mirror" and other IR-blocking ND filters which unfortunately cost quite a bit more than regular ND.



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