Big Stopper & Shady Wooded River Plym - C&C requested

[Andybazyoung]

Canon 7D Mk 2, Kit Lens 17mm - F22, 88sec exposure at ISO400.
This was my first experience at using the Big Stopper. I think I like the outcome & look forward to trying the Big stopper again..

[Shadowman]

Nice effort but that water looks like frosting.

[Andybazyoung]

John, thank you. I quite like that but have you any suggestions how to improve the frosting?

[Mike Buckley]

Wonderful composition with rich though natural colors!

how to improve the frosting?

Use a faster shutter speed to display a little more detail. Do you have other photos that you took at other shutter speeds?

[Andybazyoung]

Tank you Mike,
I went to the river in an attempt to try & make an HDR image. Once I had taken those images I realised I had my new big stopper & tried it out. I took just 3 images using the BS using different settings. One thing I did find: the suggested shutter time from the Lee shutter calculations were under by a stop. Of course, this could have been my own camera settings. I did check them & tried again with the same result! I will persevere - never quit!!!
Andy

[Wavelength]

Very lovely green......

[bnnrcn]

Hi Andy, I like the colors and composition IMO the frosting look comes from the long exposure. If you use a faster shutter speed , you might get a less frosting look. To do that , you can use a wider aperture like f/8 or f/11 with the Big Stopper

PS. I have just seen that Mike posted a similar answer already

John, thank you. I quite like that but have you any suggestions how to improve the frosting?

[Rebel]

Good composition Andy, I think you've just overdone it with the long exposure though.

Definitely a location worth a revisit though

[Polar01]

Andy just a little suggestion when using a Big Stopper or similar ND filter. As time increases you need to worry less about the exact exposure time. Example here you used 88 seconds why not round to 90 seconds two seconds more is not going to make a difference to the exposure, say you used 90 seconds and got talking to someone or yourself thus over exposing by 90 seconds more, that is only 1-stop. So I suggest that you round up the exposure time and not worry if you let it run some extra, often if I am taking say a three minute (180 sec) exposure I often let it run 1-1/2 to 2 minutes (90sec-240sec) extra, try it and see for yourself.

Cheers: Allan

[Andybazyoung]

Your comments are really welcomed. 88 seconds was taken from the exact time of exposure for this image. Lee offer a great tariff of non filter exposure times & pre filter calculated times. Although I only had time for 3 exposures during my lunch break, I did realise I needed more time than recommended from the Lee tariff card. It's only in PP I rescued the image.
Q! Am I doing something wrong or ami. Being impatient?
I probably know the answer!!!!
Thanks for your comments though Allan, they are greatly appreciated.
Andy

[Manfred M]

Your comments are really welcomed. 88 seconds was taken from the exact time of exposure for this image. Lee offer a great tariff of non filter exposure times & pre filter calculated times. Although I only had time for 3 exposures during my lunch break, I did realise I needed more time than recommended from the Lee tariff card. It's only in PP I rescued the image.
Q! Am I doing something wrong or ami. Being impatient?
I probably know the answer!!!!
Thanks for your comments though Allan, they are greatly appreciated.
Andy

Andy; I'm with Allan on this one. The longer the exposure, the less critical the exposure time will be.

With a nominal 90 second exposure (which is darn close to the 88 sec you used) ; a 45sec exposure gets you 1 stop less exposure and 180 sec is one stop more exposure. You have a lot of leeway in these super long exposures.

I had a quick look at the Lee charts and the calculations I checked for both the Big Stopper and Little Stopper are bang on. That suggests to me that the issue could be the reading you are getting from your camera's light meter. Like anything else, try bracketing your shots.

I'm surprised that you are shooting at ISO 400; your base ISO is 100 and with what you are trying to do, shooting at base ISO is the only thing that really makes sense to me. I personally would have used the extra ISO to shoot slightly wider open; f/11 would give you a sharper image than at f/20 or you could have cut the length of the exposure a bit. You've pretty well lost any indication that you are shooting flowing water.

I went to the river in an attempt to try & make an HDR image.

WHY??? There is nothing in that scene that even remotely suggests that the dynamic range is outside of what your camera can handle.

[Andybazyoung]

Thanks for your comments Manfred. I revisited the same spot along the river Plym & retook the photograph using your suggested settings. f11 at 100 ISO. However, due to the light, the shutter speed was was extended to 4 minutes.

[JohnRostron]

John, thank you. I quite like that but have you any suggestions how to improve the frosting?

Not being a fan of smoothed-out water, my suggestion would be not to use the big stopper! (My personal view.)

John

[Polar01]

Andy using a big stopper is not as easy as some think, for a scene like this I would have used base ISO for me 100 with either a 3-stop or 4-stop ND filter. However if you did not have them and only a big stopper there are work arounds which are learned through experience and failure, a lot of failure.
Now for the work around.
D7 MkII crop sensor, lens 17mm=approx. 27mmFF, f/11, ISO 100 all together = 4minutes
I know that if I focus on something 14ft away at f/11 with that lens set at 17mm lens everything 4.7ft to infinity will be in acceptable focus. There is an app for that.
Same app tells me if I change to f/5.6 from f/11 than everything from 7ft to 400ft again will be in acceptable focus.
That 2 stop difference will now mean time decreases from 4 minutes to 1 minute in time.
If I increase the ISO to 400 from base 100 that time now decreases from 1 minutes to 15 seconds.
So you see there are work arounds it just takes knowledge and experience and a lot of failures. I use my 10 stop big stopper mostly in bright sunlight, something that was 1/1000th of a second down to 1 second, however it can also be used in situations like you found yourself in. I often find that 1.3 seconds to 2 seconds makes a good time to stop medium flowing waters, faster times for faster flowing water.

Cheers: Allan

[bnnrcn]

Well, then you could always try f/8 which is one of the sweet spots of most lenses . This would give you 2 minutes instead of 4 minutes and if you increased the ISO to 200 with f/8 you would get 1 minute which is shorter than your original exposure time (88 seconds). I mean you can adjust your settings according to the look you want to achieve in the image. LCD screen would help you to decide if you had the desired look in the image or not

Thanks for your comments Manfred. I revisited the same spot along the river Plym & retook the photograph using your suggested settings. f11 at 100 ISO. However, due to the light, the shutter speed was was extended to 4 minutes.

[Manfred M]

Andy - most of my exposures where I slow the water tend to be from 1/2 sec to 2 sec, depending on the flow rate of the water. I don't think I've ever come close to exposure lengths like the ones you are using. Frankly at base ISO, a decent aperture (f/11 - f/22) I often don't even need a ND filter.



This shot is ISO 100 f/22 with a 2 sec exposure. I didn't have any filters along that day so did not use any. If I had, I likely would have used a 2-stop filter to get me up to f/11 for the same exposure time. Just as an aside; I have 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10-stop ND filters.

[pnodrog]

Hi Andy, overall I like it. Great setting, good rich colours but I would prefer a little bit more life in the water and the vignetting just a fraction less.

You can all ways try taking a couple of different exposure times then combining them via two layers in PP. Do a final adjust by reducing the top layers transparency and/or blending mode until you get the image you like.