Long exposure day shots - hello ND filters!

I love playing with long exposure night shots - my last blog post about star trails sort of covered that, but I also had a bit of fun playing with long exposure day shots the day after we shot star trails in the Glasshouse Mountains.

The scene was Dicky Beach, Caloundra, in the glaring midday sun. It's usually the time of day that "real landscape photographers" avoid.... they typically shoot at the really anti-social times of the day and night...in the dark. And cold. Or...at the slightly more socially acceptable times of "golden hour", the hour or so around dawn and dusk when magical things happen with light.

So, while midday was fabulous from a "being awake" perspective, it was apparently cacko for shooting reasonable beach scenes.

Hello neutral density filters! According to Hoya's website, "in conditions of extreme light intensity, such as sunshine on snowy mountains or on the beach, or when using a camcorder, ND (Neutral Density) filters are recommended as essential." You would expect a filter manufacturer to say that!

But...ND filters reduce the amount of light hitting the camera's sensor, which allows you to reduce shutter speeds and decrease depth of field.

Ages ago, I bought a Hoya NDx4 and NDx8, which decrease aperture by 2 and 3 stops respectively.

In the shots below, I was using my 5DII with a 24-70mm lens (1st two photos) or the 70-200mm (3rd prd photo), together with a stacked 4x ND filter, 8x ND Filter and a circular polarising filter.

The first photo shows the scene as it actually was (f/22, 1/8, ISO 100).

The photo below shows the scene with the 24-70mm lens, and the stacked ND and circular polarising filters (f/22, 1/4 sec, ISO 50).

This photo below shows the scene with the 70-200 mm lens, and the stacked ND and circular polarising filters (f/32, 1.6 sec, ISO 50 at 125mm), using the in-camera monochrome setting with a sepia filter. I have not tended to use this lens much for landscapes, but I loved that it let me stop down to f/32 and result in a shutter speed of 1.6 seconds. This slow shutter speed created the blur in the waves - and is my favourite image from the day.

This is another image I took using the two stacked ND filters together with the polarising filter, taken on an extremely overcast day.

A long time between blog posts...a new toy, and star trails!

It's been a *very* long time between blog posts, but I'm back on the bloggin' bandwagon and talking about a new toy my favourite photographer recently gave me.

I love doing long exposure night shots, and I've been experimenting more with star trails, so the aputure digital remote timer was a perfect gift for me. Mine actually has a cable which plugs into the cable release jack of my 5D II body, but it kinda looks like the one below.

This baby lets me set the camera to take say ten, five minute shots without actually touching the camera. You simply set the camera, set the timer, hit the go button and off it goes....click....wait....click....wait....no need to touch the camera, no need to use the iPhone or any other device to time your shot - with a few twiddles the camera goes off and does its own thing.

I had read about stacking star trail shots as an alternate method to the *very* long exposure shots I was used to doing. Stacking shots is where you take a bunch of images of the stars and then use software to "stack" or merge them together to form a classic star trail image.

I created this image from six, 60-second exposures (shot up at the Glasshouse Mountains), then stacked them using some awesome, FREE software called Startrails - it's available for download here.The final image would have looked better if I'd have stacked more images in the process, but it was enough to test the new toy and give me a feel for what it could do. I love it - much better than pfaffing around with a standard cable release!

Now...I just need to go find me some more stars...

Loving the long exposure!

Ah, the joy of night shoots! Haven't done it for what feels like ages, and ended up going out twice the weekend.

Other than the mossies, which around the Brisbane River, are more like small helicopters than tiny bugs, I love that night shooting relies on long exposures. The photo of the Story Bridge (above) was 100 seconds, while the one below was 611 seconds - just over 10 minutes (both at f/11 with the 28-70mm f/2.8L lens).

I love what long exposure shooting does to lights and water, and the reflections created when you have both ingredients. I love that night shooting is typically quiet and peaceful (other than random Irish drunks and the swearing that comes with having forgetten the mossie repellant).

I also appreciate the chit chat that typically comes with the other photogs who are shooting with you - last night, the guy that was shooting near Steve, Darren and I ended up being a guy I was already in contact with on Flickr. It's not the first time someone has suggested we all start wearing t-shirts with our Flickr Id's out to shoots....

It was a dilemma last night though - the sunset on one side of Cleveland Point, and the full moon rise on the other. We opted for the sunset, but the moon looked pretty spectacular through the palm trees. My lens didn't zoom far enough to capture enough detail, so I'll have to commit that image to memory.

Now - to find some more locations around Brisbane so I can do more night shooting! Where's YOUR favourite night shooting location in Brisbane?