Welding Glass

[Black Pearl]

I've been meaning to try this for ages but never seemed to get organised - until this week.

I know long exposure/blurry seas aren't everyones cup of tea but I rather of like them. Thing is a decent 10 stop ND big enough to fit all my lenses was going to set me back knocking on a £100.....and that was never gonna fly. So I went onto eBay and bought a bit of welding glass for £1.20.....delivered!
Now I'm not going to sit here and argue that it is optically perfect and it has a rather unusual colour cast and mounting it on the lens is compromised at best but it was £1.20 so I shall ignore any protests.

Took the camera out for a wander this morning for a play....yes I have a weekend off....Yeah!

Fitting the filter was a simple case of reversing my petal shaped lens hood and using two elastic bands to hold it in place - so far so good.
Exposure - well I stuck my finger in the air to judge the wind, scratched my nose, sucked my teeth and decide that 4 to five minutes at f16 would be about right - it was too.

The K30 has two Bulb modes:
One fires as long as you hold the shutter button down - not an option - I'd get bored and introduce camera shake.
The second lets you press once to open the shutter and again to close it - job done.

As I siad there is a colour cast to the images.........actually "a colour cast" may be the under statement of the year.........ok everything is GREEN!!!!!

Mono it is then.

Shot RAW - processed in LR5 - popped over into CS6 and fettled with Nik Silver Efex - tweaked with a bit of dodge/burn etc.

SOOC:


Fiddled with:


SOOC - with weird flare:


Fiddled with:


Might glue the filter to an old filter ring to give it a bit more of a secure hold and I may even knock up some flags to reduce flare....or I might just continue to fiddle as it only cost £1.20 and its a bit of a laugh.

[John 2]

I've heard of photogs using welding glass before but my concern was always over the optical quality of the glass. That doesn't seem to have suffered at all, at least in terms of sharpness and at least at the size you have posted. The green cast I guess you could compensate for quite easily but the flare aspect would be a different matter. Interesting post. Thanks for sharing.