New Gallery for www.liewwkphoto.com - Slow Shutter

http://www.liewwkphoto.com/gallery6.htmWe need to give good respect to people doing a lot of slow shutter photography... their patient to have better work need to respect ......

every shots could toke easily from 15s up to minutes... or even hours ... but it may not come out good due to composition, light change affect final output, wind shake, wave shake ....

every one extra stop we are talking in slow shutter could be in minutes ...

e.g. while we have correct exposure @30s but as for the light change (getting dark) due to sunset, we may need to have extra 1-2 stop where we are talking
30s extra exposure for 1 stop and 90s extra exposure for 2 stops .... as long as the calculation is wrong .... then everything have to reshoot, re-calculate again .......


I am shooting slow shutter witheither
1. night scape
2. B+W ND1000x
3. Lee Filter - Big Stopper

where discuss before @
http://liewwk-macro.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-gear-10-stops-nd-filters-b-w-nd100.html


after few shooting, I start love the slow shutter photography and promise to shoot more and share more .... and a New Gallery create for www.liewwkphoto.com

Slow Shutter - Gallery 6

thanks all ....

My Gear - GND and 10 Stops ND filters

just a quick share why I use GND or 10 stops ND filters in some case

1. the sky and foreground always have different of exposures and I do not want to use exposures blending, HDR and black card method to correct the exposure ...

e.g. original shot , no PP no filter, the sky look lost some highlight details especially the clouds

2. to get the correct exposure of the sky then foreground will look under

3. to correct the exposures, I normally use
i. Lee Filter GND filter
ii. Exposures masking (shoot multiple pictures to merge it)
iii. HDR
iv. black card, only apply while long exposure


but for this I only want to disucss 3i (Lee Filter GND)

4. to correct it normally I use Graduate Nature Density filter (GND) to correct the exposure of the sky or get more details of the sky without changing the foreground exposure

- with the help of the GND I have both sky and sea at right exposure with minimum effort











5. but for this type of weather, the sky may look dull and not so attractive.. so I make use of the bid stop ND to make the water look silky and the cloud movement ......

the exp from 1/5s to 140++s which allow us to see the movement line of the clouds to create more attractive sky and silky sea

















and with proper planning here is my result



I will share how to use exposures masking, Photoshop GND ... in future ....

Landscape Spot - Port Dickson 1 [Pantai Pasir Panjang]

it is not my 1st time visit this place .. but last week we make final decision to drop by and spent a wonderful evening with my gang [shunfa, Lio, Xiao Yi & Ken]....

it is locate almost end of famous beach Port Dickson where almost reach Melaka.
direction
- from Kuala Lumpur, South (Melaka, Johor, Singapore) from North south Highway
- look for Port Dickson out
- then look for Port Dickson (highway will be much easier/faster to access this beach) so follow Port Dickson (green board)
- follow the highway, you should reach to a roundabout ... don't worry look for Tanjung Tuan lighthouse direction
- then look for Pantai Pasir Panjang (which is ~12km to the destination)
- this place locate near Ikan Bakar Pantai Pasir Panjang


this place facing sunset so this is a good sunset spot with Tanjung Tuan Light house locate at far (but after dark you still view the light house lihgt)

e.g.


few advice .
1. take note of yours' tripod .. many fisherman walk around .. so may accident "kick" yours' tripod into sea
2. do not look for 2nd seafood store (the center one).. it took hours to serve even not much customer (ouckesssssssss, we are 2nd table and wait ~1.15 hours for our dishes to server)
3. mosquitoes after dark
4. plan with tide level if you want different view of the pier
5. beach is further in the ikan bakar store so if bring family have to plan for this as this spot do not have beach
......




an old shot


happy shooting .........

My Gear - 10 stops ND filters (Schneider - nd1000x vs Lee Filter - Big Stopper)

I will start to slowly review my gear (those camera, lenses, accessories) slowly here to share some experience ..

some may not be mine but belong to my gang or Lee Photo , thanks Lee to allow me to test or special order some of the accessories so far and I managed to compare, test or know the quality of my purchase before I really own it ....

today I will start with one of my important Landscape accessories, ND filter ... but I refer to ~10stops filter ....

I own bot Schneider ND110 & Lee filter big stopper so I will show some samples here... sorry for not able to rent a nd400 (HOYA) to test together ....

Schneider nd1000x

- own this ~2 year ago
- screw in
- same as other 10 stops filter total dark









Lee Filter - Big Stopper

- just got this with special order .. world wide no stock ???? for months
- square so can use with my standard Lee filter bracket or Cokin Z series holder
- same as other 10 stops filter total dark








as mentioned above, total dark .. so how to use this ????
1. custom functions to 1/2 stops ass appose to 1/3 as it comes on default
2. without the ND filter, set to MF
3. focus and read the exposure time (remember it with aperture)

if screw in type 
4. if use screw type, remove UV filter and screw in nd filter
5. if GND need to be use put on filter holder and put in GND (not easy to handle this as you not really know where to position yours' GND

if square type
6. position yours' GND
7. slot in the Big Stopper (this is where I prefer to use my Big Stopper now !).. it is so easy to use together with other filters


8. from the exposure reading above, use below method to calculate the right exposure

1/4000 1/2000 1/1000 1/500 1/250 1/125 1/60 1/30 1/15 1/8 1/4 1/2 1(second) 2s 4s 8s 15s 30s 1(minute) 2min 4min 8min 16min 30min 1hour 2h 4h 8h

if you have exp
15s at F8 , ISO1600
why I use high ISO
- easy to get exposure reading even with 10 stops
- for ISO1600, and I know from ISO1600 -> ISO100, I going to brighten in 4 stops

if with 10 stops filter the reading is 15s @ISO1600
- so while I use ISO100, I need 4 stops brighter
- then I need 4 minutes exposures to get it right @ISO100

so is this easier ? just make a table print it and bring it with u any where :D

or if you purchase Big Stopper , the table will be included in the package ..


9. if ~30s then bulb require to make the right exposure
10. please take note while shooting dawn and dusk ... light change very fast .... you may manual compensate +-1/3 stops base on the time you shoot and light


after above how I use the nd filter, let's look at the filter samples

1. all above shoot very close timing with tripod, AWB, same ISO and sam aperture... same raw--->jpeg setting

- without any filter
- no correction of WB or color cast














2.with Schneider nd1000x

- the magenta cast is bad for me
















3. with Lee Filter Big Stopper

- the blue cast look bad to me too
















so both give a bad cast to me .. so I have to shoot in raw (I always shoot raw some how), and correct the WB and color cast simply use the camera raw WB tool (click on the white point and move around)..
by simple click

both above pictures below are corrected pictures(exposures may be different due to the light change or the filter still have slight stop different

even-though both still provided different result but it look close to the original WB and color cast make use of grey card/white paper or some manual adjustment may help to approach more natural WB and colors .....


for me , I prefer Big Stopper as I can easily combine to use with GND filter ... even though