Max ND

[Annie M.]

I need to photograph an entire daylight ocean storm on one negative. Although it will not be one continuous exposure (I will be chopping out the slop) I will still be laying down about 2-3 hours of light on the neg. Any ideas on what I can use for a ND filter... safelight glass? welders glass? ... and how can I figure out the filter factor of very low transmission materials.

Cheers... Annie

[eric black]

Yikes- sounds like you need to invest in the types of filters that are used to photograph the sun- B + W makes a ND3.0, 4.0 and 6.0 filters for this which gives you a filter factor of 1000, 10,000 and 1,000,000 respectively. This way you would have an idea of how to time out the exposure. You might have to custom order it from B + W or the filter connection which has a typical turn around time of about 2-3 months. You could also check dealers of telescopes as well.

[Bob Salomon]

Why not use a ND filter? Heliopan makes them up to 3.0 density. That is a filter factor of 1000. Some companies make them up to at least 6.0 density. That would be a factor of 1,000,000.

3.0 requires 10 stops of correction. 6.0 requires 20 stops. How many stops of correction do you need? You can always double them up.

Welders glass and other non-photographic materials may not be optically flat so they could materially effect the final result. ND filters are optically flat.

[Annie M.]

Thanks!!... 20 stops should get me a few hours of exposure time.

The layer cake thing could get me days.... the possibilities are wonderful!

With a big stack I might be able to shoot my cedar grove through an entire season... I hope the bear hibernates there again then I can photograph him and his long dreaming...

Thanks again you made my day!!

[Ron Marshall]

Thanks!!... 20 stops should get me a few hours of exposure time.

The layer cake thing could get me days.... the possibilities are wonderful!

With a big stack I might be able to shoot my cedar grove through an entire season... I hope the bear hibernates there again then I can photograph him and his long dreaming...

Thanks again you made my day!!

Don't forget to take reciprocity failure into consideration when calculating your exposure.

[Annie M.]

Reciprocity... yippee!

With a big stack of NDs & reciprocity I might be able to make that one sheet last the rest of my life... no more worries about the demise of film... I will certainly have enough chemistry... as I near the end of my days I will have a showing at the MOMA... it is not as if my life's work of one print would take up much wall space...

[Bill L.]

Just remember to post the results here - I gotta see a couple of hour exposure of a storm!

Cheers!
Bill

[rippo]

so...how will you keep your camera steady? tripod might be a bit too wobbly over a couple of hours. bolt it to a rock perhaps? vibration from the surf might be a problem....

[David_Chanter]

Don't forget to take reciprocity failure into consideration when calculating your exposure.

So , being the studio guy I was and having in some studio's doing multiple pops on the strobe to get the depth of field we needed , How do you figure reciprocity failure in the field and the color shifts that surely will follow? We just did the shot and sent the film to the developer and adjusted ... Not so easy to do in the field ? Of course I really liked the one studio that had an Ascor Sun Gun , no worries about reciprocity.... Just curious....

[jetcode]

I need to photograph an entire daylight ocean storm on one negative. Although it will not be one continuous exposure (I will be chopping out the slop) I will still be laying down about 2-3 hours of light on the neg. Any ideas on what I can use for a ND filter... safelight glass? welders glass? ... and how can I figure out the filter factor of very low transmission materials.

Cheers... Annie

I have a variable ND from Singh Ray that varies from 2 stops to 8 stops. You could stack a couple of them and likely expose a negative all day long.

Joe

[Gordon Moat]

Seems like a variation on the ideas that Vera Lutter (http://www.kunsthausgraz.steiermark.at/cms/beitrag/10201617/4938419/) is exploring in her work. So are you stopping way down too?

Ciao!

Gordon Moat (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[Marko]

Just an idea - you could try simulating a variable ND filter by combining two linear polarizers.

[timparkin]

By gum Vera Lutter's work is surrounded by such pretentious twoddle...

She has "reinvented the medium of photography" using "pioneering techniques of pinhole photography" and "because it's exposed on paper, it can't be reproduced" (apart from on the web page of course). And it all "resembles the strategy of a happening"

bollox

[Ole Tjugen]

Just an idea - you could try simulating a variable ND filter by combining two linear polarizers.

That's what a variable ND filter IS! :)

That's also why stacking variable ND filters just won't work. ;)

[Marko]

That's what a variable ND filter IS! :)

So, a variable ND filter is a very clever way to charge premium for two linear polarizers. Just compare the prices. :)

And it doesn't have to be two linear polarizers - one can be circular. Most people today buy circular polarizers because of the autofocus SLRs, and if you already have one, you can simply add a linear one on top and you have an instant Vari ND.

[Annie M.]

Looks like I may have to try a filter hack for now... the ND's for this purpose are special order and take about 6 weeks.

Matt... you are correct a pod is useless in this situation.

Gordon... fstop is determined by subject... portraits...open intimate landscape about f11 seascapes to the horizon f16-f90 depending on how the waves are breaking seascapes from above I use a lot of tilt to get the breakline only or stopped down if I am doing wave sequences...

Vera & me...she does extended time... I slice and stack by personal criteria.
...she is interested in manufactured structures... I am interested in lifeforce

Some things I have tried so far
... A knock off of Weston's portrait of Tina reciting... in my version the entire spoken poem was photographed.
... Lovers under a white sheet... the room imbued with stillness... the bed actually 'glows'... very beautiful.

thanks all... any ideas for a temporary fix are appreciated.

[Mark Sampson]

The Kodak Wratten gelatin ND filters are sold by Tiffen now. Perhaps still available thru B&H/Calumet/etc.?

[Jim Noel]

If you have a stage lighting outlet available - look into ND Gels. 12"x12" are only a few dollars. They are available at least to 1.2 (four stops) , and maybe higher. One 1.2 density can be cut up and stacked as deep as you like.

[venchka]

I see Marko beat me to the idea.

Two polarizers at 90 degrees to each other are opaque. Back off from 90 degrees a bit. Figure the exposure by putting a meter behind the filters or on a camera with built in meter. Reciprocity will account for several doublings of exposure time. However, anything moving won't be in one place long enough to register on the film.

[Annie M.]

'anything moving won't be in one place long enough to register on the film'

I believe that something moving over and over in the same place does 'register'... high amplitude storm waves break forward at the same place when they hit the shallows. When they peak out there is a substantial difference between the forward break and the surrounding sea in terms of light.... though I have yet to do it over hours and hundreds of exposures... should be interesting... at least to me.

[venchka]

You may be right. You may also get a lot of mushy waves. Have you ever seen what water looks like in an exposure of several minutes? The surface looks like fog from the blur of repeated ripples.

Somewhere in the back of my brain I remember a similar discussion on another forum. Mention was made of a photographer who was assigned the task of photographing public buildings (government or university) with the stipulation that no people or cars should be visible. He used very long exposures to capture the staic buildings while eliminationg moving people and autos.

Give it a shot. All it will cost is one sheet of film and a day.

[Annie M.]

I may just be digging a visual hole in the ocean... but I don't think so.... that would be ok too... the view from my beach has the mountainous peninsula across the straight so they would end up looking like they were floating in sea clouds and I am fine with that too... However I am anticipating there will be a sinuous banding of light where the sea breaks.

[tim atherton]

Some of Sugimoto's seascapes were done this way ND filters and hours of exposure on 8x10 film

[venchka]

Like I said, go fo it!

[Annie M.]

poor misguided Sugimoto... it is obvious that the sea must be photographed with a 7x11... same ratio as the curl of a breaking wave...

I had not known that was his method... in most of the interviews I have read he is very evasive on that point... thanks! ...

[Struan Gray]

You should see the surf line as a brighter area. If you want to get really clever, you could sit there tripping a press shutter each time a wave passes a particular point - you'll then build up a photo of the average wave.

If you have a shoreline that reflects the swell rather than just dissipating it, you can also sometimes see the standing wave patterns as different parts of the pattern reflect different parts of the sky - I've had this in few-minute exposures with waves bouncing off a cliff at my feet and a bright line on the horizon where the setting sun shows under the clouds.

One practical tip: screw-in filters will provide a better light seal around the edge of the filter than gels in a holder. That said, they are hard to find (and expensive) in photographic diameters. I think Chromatek sell a filter holder/hood where the gel filters are enclosed: you can always steal their good idea.

[Annie M.]

Struan... your average wave is very similar to my intention. As you know the wave break pattern at the shore is an echo of bottom topography so although it appears as chaos it is actually manifesting within rather narrow parameters. I have probably watched the breaking of hundreds of thousands of waves on my beach... there is a spot that crests in a peculiar way and it is that sinuous band of backlit water that captures my interest... I think the photgraph I wish to make will be rather like the cumulative effect of the waves as they may reside in my subconscious... not like the turning of the pages of a book with each wave to a page but one nebulous archtypical dream wave.

Thank you for the good ideas on the filters.

...A

[Struan Gray]

I've done ten and twenty waves, but that wasn't enough to look like anything other than a blurry picture of a single wave. It didn't help that I was on a shallow beach and the tide was going out: the first few times I'd focussed and set the movements the water was gone :-)

If you do want to play with cross swells and/or standing waves, google earth can be very informative as a way of scouting.

A sight tube or some kind of rifle-scope arrangement would be useful if you want the breaking to be a localised as possible. There are ways of automating the tripping of the shutter (even cheap webcams come with movement-recognition software these days, or you can use a microphone and a delay circuit), but it would probably spoil all the fun.

Please show us when you're done.

[Annie M.]

... 1001 waves

...anniemoto

[Remigius]

... 1001 waves

...anniemoto

m for moto, right?

[Annie M.]

True!

[Annie M.]

Oh sure... head down to the beach and get a HUGE storm all on one negative...

Things went OK for the first few waves it was amazing to be the only one out in the storm... in retrospect when the seagulls started booking it inland I should of taken it as a sign... I finally clued in when the ocean started pouring in the tops of my boots and the bellows of my camera achieved resonance with the wind and let out a protesting groan.

Haven't laughed so much since the time I moved to the woods to photograph trees and the bear broke into my little cabin in the middle of the night... I guess he thought it was a big stump and just peeled the door like a piece of bark.

Anyway I guess I am begining to understand why I am no longer referred to out here as 'our hot new neighbor' but as 'that crazy photographer up the road'

sheesh... Annie

[rippo]

and? did you get the shot?? :)