Little Hat Trick (Grey card)

Hi In a recent Outdoor Photographer edition Mr. Raia tells us about using a grey ca rd instead of a split neutral densitiy filter. He says that by this way you won' t see immediately that the image is "filtered". If he needs to compensate for a two stop difference he simply holds the card in front of the lens for say three seconds over the brighter part while the exposure time is say four seconds. Is a nybody familiar with the tecnique and can tell me how I control that the card is hold and fixed in the right spot in front of the lens? Thanks Tom

dodging the film during exposure is a fairly common technique used by Jack Dykinga and some others. While no-one would argue that it doesn't work for him/them, I prefer a technique that is more quantifiable..... such as ND grads. I would also argue that, used properly, ND grads can also be applied so that the effect is not obvious..... http://georgestocking.com

The really killer thing would be a filter that would dodge small details during exposure, like a piece of glass that would let dim light through, but would block out bright light, effectively making an in-camera contrast-reduction mask. Then you could photograph under any lighting conditions and get the full tonal range. Unfortunately the demand is sufficiently small that no one is devoting any resources so it'll probably never happen.

~chris jordan (Seattle)

Chris, it is possible to make such filter by yourself. Try Cokin UV filter and attach some black paper on it so you block bright areas. Make first exposure with this filter, say 1/30, then remove filter and make second exposure, say 1/250. I tried this and it works, but takes some time to cut masks, which are really small, even for bigger areas. It helps a bit if you put filter on a bigger distance to the lens and it is easier to work with wideangles. Regards,