Yeah, you know me. Who’s down with GND? Every last lady…
Wait. Not sure that’s appropriate. GND (Graduated Neutral Density) filters are what I’m talking about.
They are a mainstay of old school landscape photographers. I’ve done the circular GND thing, but since I’m using lenses with stupid large filter threads (which means they must be better than smaller ones, right?1) and my favorite lenses all seem to have different diameters, I figured it was time to just get a proper holder and use square filters. They’ll work on my main lenses, which use 77mm and 67mm threads, and when I get stupid and pull out the medium format they’ll work there, too. So it’s a good investment2.
Sometimes the ugly days will surprise you with a few good moments if you’re patient.
I started with an open-box set from the bargain bin on the Formatt Hitech site that has 1, 2, and 3 stop soft GND and 1, 2, and 3 stop solid ND filters in resin. They are pretty cheap to begin with, especially compared to the name brand resin filters, but with the open box bargain they were as cheap as anything save the horrible random-chinese-company-brand filters you get off of the amazon dot com. My thought was to experiment with them and then be better informed if I decide to spend money on higher quality glass in the future.
I’m not bitching too much as getting a half dozen good filters for less than a hundred is impossibly inexpensive — one Lee resin filter costs that much — but they aren’t exactly perfectly neutral. The clouds today and the foggy sky yesterday definitely showed a magenta cast, especially when I tried stacking the NDs to get 5 stops. Maybe Hitech is trying to be the Velvia of the filter world. It’s not the worst thing, and probably correctable in software if I cared or knew how to do more than use the crop tool and click on “Auto sharp”, but definitely not perfectly neutral.
I also got a reverse GND for sunsets since I take way too many pictures of of the sun setting on a perfectly flat horizon. I really should remember to turn around once in a while, as the joy of golden hour light is what’s illuminated, not the lamp. Also, I have heard rumors that there’s stuff east of the beach, though I haven’t confirmed that recently. Really seems pointless to head east of I-5.
Of course, the weather yesterday was terrible. Foggy, but not foggy enough to be interesting. Today was almost as bad, but there were high tropical clouds, so at least there was something to test. And sometimes the ugly days will surprise you with a few good moments if you’re patient.
I shot the sand at the waterline, and then the sky, and found 1.5 stops difference. Strange as I usually see 2 to 3 stops, but that’s why you don’t just get a 3 stopper and be done with it. So I began with the 2 stop GND and added 3 stops of ND so I could do a long exposure.
Interesting to see the little blurries there as I was using 15-25 second shutter speeds and there were lots of people around, kids running in and out of the water, surfers, and wading birds. I think the ghosts add flavor.
I did clean my sensor last night and can be proud of the fact that there aren’t a dozen little spotty things to use the retouch tool on. So I have that going for me, which is nice.
Then I slapped the 2 stop reverse GND on as the sun was on the horizon. This worked well, and the hard edge was much appreciated compared to the softer GND I started with. I have some proper glass filters, hard edge, already on the way as I think they’ll be useful for this superwide lens, but this sky wasn’t the best for a reverse GND alone, so I slapped the 1 stop GND on with it to tone down the top of the sky some. That gave me 2.5 stops on the horizon and maybe 1.5 stops at the top of the frame, and I set it up to do three shots, at exposure setting and 2 stops above and below. Just to experiment with what I got using different metering.
Then, somewhere in the middle of this intervalometer experimentation, the sky went insane. This was 10-15 minutes after sunset and the clouds had dulled, but they suddenly brightened again and turned a brilliant crimson. It was cool. Everyone on the beach was either staring slack jawed or trying to take selfies with the red sky behind them.
Alas, I spent time fumbling with the camera, still had 3 stops of ND filter in even though it was getting significantly darker, and still had both GNDs in though the sky was barely a stop brighter than the reflection at this point. I yanked one and lined it up for some shots, but I was rushing and didn’t remember to turn off my bracketing. Of the half dozen shots, each between 10 and 25 seconds long, only 2 came out. Then one I did with a shorter exposure that came out OK. The brilliant sky only lasted a minute or two and all of this was past the peak.
I guess it’s a good lesson. I know how to set this stuff up, but all the fiddling and silly experiments with timers and automatic exposures are too tempting. I could have gotten at least three more great shots with different framing if I’d just stuck to the script. So these aren’t my best work, though I did clean my sensor last night and can be proud of the fact that there aren’t a dozen little spotty things to use the retouch tool on. So I have that going for me, which is nice.
Here are the two that came out close to adequately exposed. Both taken after the peak in the crimson glow, but still before it had completely faded. The last one I had spun the aperture way open and was a bit overexposed, but none of the highlights were blown so it was recoverable. There are benefits to compressing the dynamic range before it hits the sensor.
I’m sure I’ll take more soon, and we have proper rain coming this weekend. Two storms back to back, so maybe I can get something dramatic in between the storms, or after the second one passes. There’s often a day with great visibility and fluffy white clouds after a front moves through, so here’s hoping the timing of the rain is photographically opportunistic.3
1 That’s what she said.
2 By investment I obviously mean expense. No offense, but if you’re looking to someone wasting good money on camera gear for financial advice you’re probably barking up the wrong tree. Between the lenses and filters I have I could have really invested, in something really important and useful. Like a guitar.
3 It’s 2020. Let’s be real, this is about as much optimism as we can invest right now.