More Long Exposure Photography Fun…

So… I’m still kind of obsessed with this long exposure monochrome photography thing. It’s a bit addictive once you’ve sussed it out. For me, going out every night with a camera isn’t out of the ordinary, my parallel addiction to blipfoto.com feeds that habit, but since getting into this long exposure stuff I can’t wait to get out and about. It’s like wiping my photography slate clean and I can go back and photograph everything I’ve photographed before in a new way.

What I have learned though, is that Formatt’s range of Hitech filters are NOT particularly good, something I found particularly evident with some experimentation tonight. Shooting with a very cheap screw in ND8 on the Sigma 10-20mm lens there is no colour casting at all. Add in a Hitech 0.9 and 0.6 ND soft grad, with this £5 screw in, no colour casting. Add in the Hitech 0.9ND and it all goes purple in the sky. Take out the ND8 and it’s all still purple.

Examine this logically. The ND8 gives a 4 stop reduction in light; the 0.9ND gives a 3 stop. The 2 grads give a 3 and 2 stop reductions, combined to 5. Now, with the screw in, that’s overall 4 stops reduction with a further 5 stops grad in the sky, no cast. With the ND0.9, that’s overall 3 stops with a further 5 in the sky, less than with the screw in and the colour cast is horrible. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes style power of deduction to realise it’s that Hitech 0.9 ND that’s spoiling this party for the colour shots! It’s got to go and I NEED a B+W ND110 and quickly. From what I see from other people with this filter, no casts! Poor show Formatt.

Anyway, tonight’s trip took in Newhaven Harbour, the Old Pier at the back of Ocean Terminal shopping centre at the Western Harbour and finally, a quick pit stop in the Dean Village for the Water of Leith. The 2 coastal stops were, shall we say, challenging. It was cold, blowing a gale and there were occasional spots of rain in the air. Despite this though, both Newhaven and the old pier gave some decent shots overall. I’ve photographed that old pier a few times now; finally I’ve got a shot I’m happy with.

Tried some new angles at Newhaven, thankfully the gate was open at the top here and I didn’t have to do any acrobatics over the fence…

The wind was so bad down here tonight you literally had to shield the tripod with your body to get a decent shot. Typical Scottish wind too, came from every angle and was bloody cold!

Quick trip inland to the Dean Village was the best option to escape the wind. It’s a great location this and the last twice I’ve visited here there was a film crew on the bank I wanted and the time before that the Water of Leith was in serious spate at the banks were under water. No so today and a few different angled shots of this great scene were had. I liked this one best, very low angle from the opposite bank from the one I wanted. Worked well and the 2 ducks that were following me about thankfully kept moving so didn’t appear in the shot!

I’ll leave you with a couple of other shots from the last few nights using this same technique.

Forth Bridge from South Queensferry.

And the Forth Road Bridge from the same location with some nice cloud movement.

Forth Bridge again at high tide, this was taken in pouring rain, lots of cloning out of raindrops to rescue this was needed!

And finally, a shot of the causeway at Cramond leading to Cramond Island, this was my breakthrough shot. I was down here doing a sunset and gave this a quick try before I left, best shot of the night!