

That said, be careful with stacking filters at wide angles because it can lead to vignetting (the corners of your frame will pick up the filter’s edge).

You can also stack filters to get cut more light than your most extreme filter can deliver. It’s helpful to have a couple of options available to make your exposure just right. I’ve got a short review on it here but I’ve used this remote for years and it has served me well. The versatile Vello Shutterboss line of remotes is a good fit for extended exposure shooting, among the many other features it offers. Whatever water is near you can surely be turned into some ethereal magic with ND filters and a bit of patience.Īdditionally, if you’re looking to shoot longer than 30-second exposures, you’ll be best served by using a remote. While I’m all about mountain trails and rivers, ND filters work wonders in a variety of scenes, including the beach and surf. My wife was kind enough to grab an “action” shot of me as I wrestled with ND filters today. Of course, if you’re not using such an intense ND filter, the shooting process can be a little more normal.

Then, carefully attach the ND filter without touching the focus ring.If you’re using autofocus, turn AF off after you focus.So, set your camera on a tripod with no filter attached, then frame and focus your shot.(While a variable ND filter can help find the sweet spot a little easier, it can lead to image irregularities on wide-angle lenses.)īecause so much light is lost, there’s not much to see in the viewfinder or to focus with. If the filter’s effect is too much, you may need a less extreme ND filter.
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The rest of my exposure info hung around f/10 and ISO 100 for most of the shots I took. In the shots I took this afternoon, it was a pretty overcast day so I really wasn’t competing with the sun. This gives me the ability to slow a shot from 1/15s down to 30-seconds, which can produce some pretty dramatic motion.ĭepending on the time of day and how much shade you’re in, a 9-stop filter can provide some dramatically-long exposures. Using ND Filters for Smooth Water Motionįor these types of daytime scenes, I’ve got a Hoya 9-stop ND filter that I’ll attach to my trusty old Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens to really cut down on the exposure time. These x-stop ND filters commonly go down to 10-stop versions – at which point you’re down to 0.1% of the light entering the lens if there was no ND filter in place. A 2-stop ND filter will cut the light by half again (so 25% of the light with no ND filter). The number we need to care about is the 3-stop reference, which helps us quickly figure out how this helps our image exposure.Ī 1-stop ND filter will cut the light entering the lens by half.

This article is not about those equations. The ND8 and the 0.9 numbers get into the math behind the light entering the lens. They all tell the same story about the ND filter. You’ll commonly see references like ND8, 0.9 ND filter, or 3-stop ND filter. There are a few different notations on ND filters that indicate how they affect light. For the sake of this article, we’re talking only about the screw-on type of filter that fastens onto the end of your lens.Īn ND filter reduces the amount of light that enters the lens without drastically altering the color (hence, the “neutral” part of it).
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However, there are also square filters that can be part of a mounting system, as well as inserts into the lens bodies (aka, a drop-in filter), and even built-in filters that are part of a camera’s body (most commonly in professional video cameras). A Neutral-Density filter (or ND filter) is a piece of glass that most commonly goes in front of your camera lens by screwing the filter onto the lens filter ring.
