Monday Nov 24, 2008 at 09:40

Serendipity

On the treck back down to the car on Saturday morning after my abortive attempt at shooting the Loch I managed to salvage at least one decent image from the trip.

This small, inconspicuous water-fall is located just upstream from the first footbridge on the trail to Alberta Falls from Glacier Gorge trailhead. I just happened to glance to my left while crossing the bridge on the way back.

Just as with the Loch, timing is everything and in this case, it worked out perfectly. The sun was just catching the water through the trees. That, plus the nearly-but-not-quite frozen fall made for a scene with some potential.

Having just mentioned that I didn’t get to use my Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter often enough, this proved a perfect opportunity. The exposure was 4 seconds at f/13 ISO 100.

A nice way to use the Vari-ND is as follows:

• Select your preferred ISO (presumably the lowest, given that the whole objective here is longer exposure times
• Select your preferred aperture (probably somewhere in the sharpest range for your lens – here I was slightly on the darker side of f/11)
• Dial-in your desired shutter speed (depends on the subject and the effect you’re looking for)
• Finally, adjust the Vari-ND until your meter reads as you want it

Of course, on occasions, you’ll run out of ND stops before you get the metering where you need it. If so, you can tweak the sequence of the steps above. However, doing things in that order allows you to use the Vari-ND as I think was intended – set your camera up as you want it and then reduce the light hitting the sensor by using the filter.

You may want to focus your lens (either manually or use AF-Lock) before increasing the ND setting on the filter. This directly affects available light through the lens and make it harder for either you or your camera’s autofocus system to get things set precisely.

One final thing to note: you can get some odd optical interactions when using the Vari-ND at or near its Max setting in conjunction with a circular polarizer, so beware in those circumstances.

Posted in Equipment Technique

Stephen · Monday, November 24, 2008, 09:40 · Permalink

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