It’s amazing what washes up on the beach, this Aussie surfer must have drifted across the Tasman Sea from Bondi! Taken at Paekakariki Beach just North of Wellington.

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I’ve had the B+W 10 stop 3.0 ND filter for a few months now and thought I would give it a whirl on a recent trip to NZ. In retrospect I should have played with it before I left or even researched other peoples experiences, needless to say I had mixed results. Since then I’ve studied up and thought I would share some tips that may help you get better results.

First up how I use the filter. Before you even put the ND filter on follow these steps:

• put your camera on a tripod you are going to be shooting upwards of 10s so this is a must.
• compose the shot, if you are using this filter it’s likely you want to show some sort of motion blur, include clouds, water, crowds or something that moves and juxtapose this with something static.
• set focus and switch to manual, I wouldn’t rely on auto focus through the filter.*
• set the white balance if shooting jpeg (the camera has no chance once the filters on)*
• correctly expose the scene, setting the aperture and shutter speed (for the scene without the filter at this stage).*
• take a test shot and check histogram (re do previous step if unhappy).

Setting the white balance isn’t as important if shooting in RAW as it can be changed in the RAW editor. Focus and exposure can be set with the filter on if your camera has ‘live view’. Zoom in 100% to set the focus approximately 1/3rd into the image. I find with live view setting the exposure with the filter on the resulting images can come out somewhat dark. I suggest to add an extra stop (3 clicks of shutter speed) to correctly expose the image….or shoot and review the histogram.

Put the filter on!

• stop down the exposure 10 stops (for my camera this is 30 clicks of the shutter speed dial as each increment is a third of a stop – make sure you are going the correct way!).
• go for it, check histogram, correct accordingly.

At 17mm on a full frame camera you really notice lens drop off (darkened edges on the image) so be mindful of this. When you get your photos into post you are likely to have to do a lot of colour correction, first correct the white balance. Colours still look way out? You’ve either got colour cast caused by your filter (the drop in Formatt (Hi-Tech) filters are bad for this, tisk tisk not again Formatt?) or infrared contamination (images lack contrast, appears ‘muddy’).

Here is a shot taken at Craters of the Moon, Taupo, New Zealand. Straight out of the camera you can see it looks muddy and the white balance is all off:

After some colour correction in Adobe RAW we get (note the lack of contrast):

Converting to black and white and processing in Photoshop the end result is a far more contrasty shot where colour is not an issue:

IR contamination the good the bad and the ugly:

• foliage (leaves, grass etc.) come out bright, can be a good look in b&w, leaves reflect IR so they don’t burn in the sun!
• Blue sky’s appear darker, good thing
• Rocks and sand absorb IR, can look muddy and lack contrast
• the sea absorbs all IR, ok to shoot

There are a couple of options to minimise IR contamination.

• The use of an additional hot mirror filter to block IR (I’ve never tried this so can comment on its effectiveness)
• Shoot the sea to minimise IR
• Don’t shot long exposures!
• Shot long exposures as well as short ones and blend in PS

Happy New Year, hello and welcome to my first newsletter of 2010. Since we last spoke I’ve been to the North Island of NZ, dabbled in tilt shift time lapse video making, shot a models portfolio and published my first photographic guide (Manly, NSW). In between all of that I’ve been organising my exhibition at Ash’s Table, processed some new images, consumed half a turkey and celebrated New Year! Here are some points of interest:

Exhibition Ash’s Table – Reminder
Starting January 13th running for 6 week I will be exhibiting at Ash’s Table Cafe, Manly. I hope you can make it along, have a coffee and check out my images.

Ivanhoe Hotel Manly – Australia Day
On Australia Day (Tuesday 26th January), 11am-3pm I will be displaying 10 images from the Northern Beaches on the lobby bar plasma screens. A good excuse to go for a beer not that you need one on Australia day!

New Zealand – new images
To keep up to date with all my new images subscribe to the RSS feed of the latest images section.

This month I’ve got some new shots from New Zealand’s North Island. I managed to get a few in whilst dodging the rain clouds, unfortunately it was a bit of a wasted trip in that respect. I’ll be posting more in the coming weeks as I get time to process them.

Here are some of my latest shots the results of a short trip to NZ. Unfortunately most of the trip was rained off so I didn’t get out as much as I would have liked. I’ve still a few to come but here are the best. The Opononi shot were both taken in the daytime and are the result of 30 second exposures using a 10 stop ND filter (not an effect in Photoshop). A tutorial on how to get the best results to follow.

Opononi, New Zealand

Paekakariki, New Zealand

Opononi, New Zealand

Paekakariki, New Zealand

Rotorua, New Zealand

Whilst in NZ I managed to shoot some time lapse photography. This is my first attempt and I made some mistakes but you live and learn. Time wasn’t a luxury I had so the video is quite short. It’s a start, a great experience, learning curve and something I’ll be sure to do some more of around Manly.

The tilt shift effect which makes everything look tiny and toy like is achieved either using a specialised lens or as in this case in post processing via Photoshop. A process sometimes known as miniature faking. I’ve been meaning to release a tutorial on how to do this as well as the action script I used to automate this process, stay tuned.

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Port of Napier, New Zealand from Lee Duguid on Vimeo.