Black Glass, 10stop filter, ND1000, ND3.0 call it what you will but I have been out shooting with a BW110 10 stop filter that I purchased recently and thought I would share my experiences a little more closely than in my ast blog where I mentioned it briefly. I had been entranced by some of the images that I saw on various fora using one of these and thought that it would provide an interesting way to get RF photographs in places where it is smoetime difficult to get them.
Typically the get used to smooth out motion and achive milky flowing water or clouds and they work wonders on waterfalls and fountains. They do however unless you buy at the very top end of the market produce a fairly strong colour cast on images, I have found it fairly simple to remove these casts using either a custom white balance or using an eyedropper tool in photoshop raw to bring the white balance back to where it should be.
The application that really intrigued me though was being able to shoot city or street scenes and be able to use the for RF stock, lets face it people just get in the way, I mean how dare they be on the street when we are trying to take pictures lol. Anyway being able to shoot 1 minute exposures like the picture of the Nagytemplom in Debrecen is a wonderful case in point, I took these on a beautiful Sunday morning and the grand square was milling with hundreds of people, not that you can tell from the pictures. What you are left with is one or two "people stains" where folk stopped to take a picture but they are relatively simple to clone out leaving a simple picture of some grand architecture without the hassle of having to submit for editorial use only.
One of the draw backs is focusing, quite often the camera struggles to find focus with so little light hitting the sensor so you have to focus with out the filter on then lock it off and screw in the filter which on occasions can cause you to knock your tripod. But overall I think I am going to have a great deal of fun with this little addition to my line up even though it will see little use over the cold winter months.
