The Story
April, 2009. My wife's parents came to visit us and we had lunch at our place. After lunch my wife thought of taking them for a walk in downtown Lisboa.
A few weeks before, I've bought a new filter and I was eager to try it in a urban scenario. This filter was a 10 stop ND (neutral density) filter. With it I could do some long exposures in broad daylight. This kind of exposures would allow me to, for example, capture the clouds movement.
So I packed the material (camera, lenses, filters, filter holder, tripod) and we headed to Lisboa. When we got there, I left them doing some sightseeing and got right to business. I mounted the camera on the tripod and started exploring potential angles. I started with the Restauradores square but the angles weren't quite as I wanted. Then I moved to Rossio square and hanged there for a while. My objective was to capture the cloud movement and "erase" the people from the street.
The 10 stop filter is a bit tricky to use and I can't really say that I've already managed to use it properly. I will share with you some guidelines on how to use this filter:
- You need a tripod. This filter will cut 10 stops of light and what this means is that, if in a regular photo you will shoot at 1/100 seconds shutter speed, with this filter the same shot (without changing any other setting) will require a 10 seconds exposure (give or take).
- You must mount the camera on the tripod without the filter on and first choose the angle. After you choose the angle you must memorize the settings (Aperture, Shutter Speed) and move the camera into Manual mode (I usually shoot in Aperture mode). After the angle is chosen, you also need to change the focus to Manual.
- So, you got the camera on the tripod, without the filter, in Manual Focus mode. Now you must do some math :) I've simplified it: I simply multiply the Shutter Speed that the camera calculated in Aperture Mode for 1000. In doubt, I will chose the higher speed interval (the math may not give you an available speed interval).
- After the settings in Manual mode are set, I gently put the filter on the camera, taking extra care to not touch the zoom ring, nor the focus ring.
- Now all is set. I use the remote control (if you don't have it, just use the timer) to take the photo.
- Another word of advice: with this high exposures during the day, the slightest amount of light that reaches the sensor from anywhere else than the filter itself will ruin the photo. You must take vary care with the viewfinder (cover it with the appropriate cap) and the space around the filter holder (this one I didn't managed to do it very well - my last idea was to use the upper side of a sock - the elastic part - cut off from the rest of it, until I get a fabric ring that will, hopefully, prevent any light from reaching the lens. I hadn't tried it yet).
So, I took a couple shots (they require some time of preparing) and moved on to another spot.
Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 3.0 filter
Slik Pro 340DX tripod
30/1 second
F/22.0
12 mm
100
Original Photo
Post Processing
When I reviewed the few photos taken this day, I came to a conclusion: almost all of them were rubbish. They were too dirty. Even this one, if you look at it, it's badly exposed and has lots of flare from the light that come from the filter holder holes. Also the colors are quite strange, with the Magentas very high. The latest is a characteristic of this filters: don't care too much with the White Balance or the colors when you are taking the shot. They will never be closer to the real ones. So, I had two alternatives: I could try to fix the colors or I would convert the photo to Black & White. Usually the later is the preferred for it's simplicity. In this photo I went that path.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom and started by removing some dust spots (they were more visible because I used a very small aperture) and then increased the Highlight Recovery and the Contrast. Then I applied the "Matt's 300 Look - Strong" preset (you can find it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/monday-presets-the-300-look) and converted the resulting image to Grayscale. Finally I've increased the Contrast a bit more and moved on to CS4.
In CS4, I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Auto Levels. Then I converted to Black and White (Red Filter preset) and increased the Contrast again. This gave me the full size (10Mp) final image.
I usually publish my photos with 1024px in the largest size and use a great Photoshop action by Manyk to do the re-size.
You can find it here: http://manyk.deviantart.com/art/Web-Sharpening-with-Photoshop-29038461
I'm not that happy with result to be honest, but for some reason (probably the impact of it) this photo is very popular among my viewers.
Final Photo
Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Rossio-118904515
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