Filters For Seascape Photography (Part 2 of 3)

Four Tips & Tricks When Using Creative Filters

This is the second article of three on using filters on your camera for seascape work.  Here’s a link to the first posting on which filters to buy for seascape work.  I thought it might be worth sharing 4 little Tips/tricks that I have found useful as I’ve been working with creative filters.

Tip # 1 – Carrying your filters

I spent about a year trying to find the best way to carry my filters.  At first I left them in my camera bag, but found it slightly cumbersome rummaging around for filters when you need to swap them quickly. I also lost one of my Singh Ray GND filters while on a dawn shoot at Turimetta (expensive loss). Anyway  I ended up going to an army disposal shop and purchasing an army hip belt.  This is absolutely perfect for carrying creative filters for a few reasons:

• The pouch holds all 7 of my filters as well as the creative filter holder
• The dimensions perfectly hold my grad ND filters inside their padded protection cases
• I know that my filters are always with me even if I put my camera bag down on a rock somewhere
• Now I grab the pouch and I know I have my entire filter kit with me (rather than spreading filters around pockets in a photo vest for example)

So if you are looking for a better way of carrying your filters you might want to consider a belt pouch like this one.

Tip # 2 – Remove one filter slot from your creative holder

If you enjoy shooting with ultra-wide lenses, then even with the ZPro holder (100mm) you will probably find that you get some vignetting when you are zoomed right out.  I reckon on my D700 I get a bit of vignetting if I am any wider than about 19mm.  One way you can cut down the vignetting slightly is to remove the third row from the filter holder.  This leaves you with two slots instead of three.   In this configuration I can still put my circular polariser in the holder, then add an ND filter as well as a graduated ND filter.  I have found that I never use the third slot.  So if you don’t need three…. simply unscrew the four screws and take the outer slot off.

Tip# 3 – If you do need to go ultra-wide, reverse your holder

Reversed holder gives one slot in front of lens and two slots now behind the lens

I’m not sure if you can do this with Lee holders, but you can definitely do it with Cokin filter holders.  If you are just using 1 filter (like a grad ND) and you really want to shoot as wide as possible,  you can reverse your creative filter holder and shoot ultra-wide without vignetting.

 

Tip # 4 – Keep two lens clothes to remove the salt.

If there is a lot of salt spray in the air, your filters will get coated fairly quickly.  You will need to clean them regularly.  Microfibre cloths can quickly become smeary if they get damp with seawater, so I keep two lens cleaning clothes in my pocket,  a chamois one that does a good job of absorbing all the moisture and drying my filter well, then I give it a final polish with a dry micro fibre cloth fora streak-free finish.

If anybody else has any tricks or tips for using creative filters, I’d love to hear about them.

In my final article, I’m going to try and do some experiments around understanding and quantifying the colour casts that various filters create on your images.

Brent

Camera Filters for Seascape Photography (part 1 of 3)

I have had a few people ask me questions about filters for seascape photography, so I thought I would do a 3 part detailed set of articles about the types of filters I use and why I use them.  This first article will talk about the specific filters I carry in my filter pouch.  Article two will talk about some tips and tricks for using these filters,  and the third article will compare some of the different makes of filters in terms of what the do to colour balance etc.

Whats in my filter pouch?

I have built up my filter collection over a period of time.  I probably use filters about 95% of the time when I am shooting seascapes.  I can hear some of you thinking “Why use filters when you have photoshop”?  Well yes, Photoshop can simulate some of my filters if I bracket correctly in the camera, but there are some that it can not simulate.  There is no substitution for doing it in camera.  So here’s my inventory of filters.

1) I use a ZPro size creative filter system (thats 100mm wide filters that are either 100mm tall or 150mm tall for Grad NDs).  They come with adapter rings to screw onto different size lens threads.  This is one of the advantage with drop in filters as opposed to screw-in.  You can use them on lenses with different size filter threads with a cheap adapater ring.  Both Cokin and Lee make good filter holders (mine is a Cokin holder)

2) 3 stop Neutral Density Filter – I use a Lee ND filter.  This is one of the filters you can’t simulate with photoshop.  It allows you to maintain a slow shutter speed as the light increases when shooting early morning seascapes.  I tried a Cokin ND filter, but it gave me a terrible magenta colour cast.  I find the Lee ND filter works very well.  This filter simply drops in place and reduces the light entering your lens by 3 stops.

3) Graduated ND filters – I carry a set of four different graduated ND filters.

• Singh Ray 3 stop hard graduated ND filter
• Singh Ray 2 stop hard graduated ND filter
• Lee 3 stop soft graduated ND filter
• Lee 2 stop soft graduated ND filter

So why do I have four of them, and why different brands?  Depending on the light, sometimes you need 3 stops of ND to equalise the bright sky with the foreground,  other times the sky is overcast and cloudy and 3 stops will darken it too much, thats why I carry both 3 stops and 2 stop GNDs.  If I’m shooting a horizon, then the hard ND filters provide a nice clean division between sky and sea…. works well.  If I have mountains, or rocks protuding into the sky, then she soft GNDs manage the transition better.  Why different brands?  I bought Singh Ray’s first,  but lost one of them,  and they are just too damn expensive to replace,  I think Lee give you better bang for buck and would recommend Lee GND filters now to anybody wanting to buy some.

4) Cokin Circular Polarising filter - This drops into the internal ring of the filter holder and allows me to control the glare off the water, or darken the sky.  It also cuts down the light by about 2 stops.  This is another filter that can’t be simulated in Photoshop (at least not for cutting through water and seeing whats underneath).  Polarising filters make an incredible difference to the definition in the sky (by reducing glare) as well as controlling the glare of the water.  The difference in your seascapes can be significant if you use a polariser in the right situation.  You can fairly easily tell if a polariser is going to add any value to the shot by holding it up to your eye and turning it.  If your eye  doesn’t see much difference, neither will your camera.

5) B&W 10 stop ND filter – Otherwise known as my “bit of stonking black glass”.   This is a screw-in filter, but it does allow you to dramatically cut the light entering the lens during the day and shoot with some slow shutter speeds.  It’s a pain to have to screw this filter on, but I haven’t seen any dark drop-in filters.  This is a fun filter to use as you can get some cool effects with it.  However when this filter is on your camera, it’s like looking at the lens-cap.  You have

to compose first, then screw the filter on (and put an eyepiece on the viewfinder to stop light entering the camera via the viewfinder).

So,  if you wa

nt to buy filters for seascape/landscapes… here’s the order that I would recommend buying them in (assuming you are on a budget and can’t buy everything in one go).

Brent’s Recommended Buying Order

1. ZPro size creative filter holder (either Lee or Cokin)
2. Adapter ring for the lens(es) that you wish to attach your filter holder to
3. Lee 3 stop ND filter
4. Lee 3 stop soft GND filter
5. Lee 3 stop hard GND filter
6. Circular polariser
7. Lee 2 stop soft GND filter
8. Lee 2 stop hard GND filter
9. B&W 10 stop ND filter

Stay tuned for the second article in this series which will be published in a few more days.

Brent

Announcing a 1 Day Intensive Seascape Workshop

Hey folks

Lately I’ve had a number of people enquire about whether they can get some formal training on the way I capture and process my seascape images.  I’ve done a couple of one-on-one lessons which went down well, so now I am planning an intensive 1 day workshop that will cover all aspects of seascape photography from equipment, planning, the capture, and post processing of your images.  I will be sharing all my tips, tricks and secrets that I have accumulated over the past 5 years of shooting seascapes.

I’m going to limit the number of spaces to keep this group small.  So if you want more information or would like to view the workshop agenda, please go to this page.

Brent

Pre-flight checklist

Ever been or near the cockpit when a pilot is ready to take off or land? Doesn’t matter whether they are a professional or amateur pilot, they all do the same thing… their pre-takeoff or pre-landing checklist. Doesn’t matter whether they have flown thousands of flights, they still do it to make sure they don’t forget something silly.

So have any of you hot-shots done any of the following by accident?

• Shot on high ISO
• Shot JPEG instead of RAW
• Left your exposure compensation with a bias from your last shoot
• Left your light metering on the wrong setting (like spot meter)
• Forgot to clean your lens (and found later a big fingerprint or dirt splodge on it)

Yeah… made all of these mistakes, so I have developed a “pre-flight check” that I now do relegiously at the start of every shoot. I recommend that you do something similar and it will helpfully stop you making silly mistakes. Here’s how my pre-flight check works.

Step 1) Set the camera shooting modes and custom mode first (I have settings for “Normal” and “Landscape Mode”). You must do this first because otherwise all your settings will change if you do it later…. ie. You could do your pre-flight check, and then change your shoot mode and everyhing could be mis-set.

Step 2) I go across the top of my Nikon in sequence

• Quality = RAW
• WB = Auto (not that impotant if you are shooting RAW)
• ISO = 200 (my starting point)
• Mode = Aperture priority
• Exposure compensation = 0

Step 3) Then I do the back of my camera

• Light metering = matrix
• Focus= centre spot

Step 4) Finally I do the front of my camera

• Bracketing= off
• Focus= manual (most of my landscape work is manual focus)
• Lens = clean and clear of dust.

So I highly recommend that find something that works for you…. and develop your own pre-flight check….I can guarantee that you will have less unpleasant surprises if you make this part of your routine… It only takes 15sec to do.

BP