which neutral density filter should you buy first if you want to know just watch this video
so I get this question very often and if you don't want to watch the entire video I will tell you
right away the first filter to buy is the 10 stops ND either in the square format or in the round
screw-on format keep on watching and I will tell you why the very first neutral density filter
that I bought was a variable round screw-on nd filter I think was a six stops variable filter
it was the worst mistake bad quality none of the stops was really working very well money just
thrown in the garbage please don't do the same mistake in order to explain to you why the 10
stops neutral density filter is the most versatile I think I should take some photos and prove it to
you I also want to tell you that we are again in the Italian alps we have been in this spot before
I think it was winter 2020 full of snow you might remember the video nevertheless let me set it up
no battery
at least they didn't die but I still need to put it on
there is so much water that this looks good even without any nd filter but I
will make my point anyway so I found my composition ideal settings
the lowest native iso possible for my Nikon d810 is iso 64.
and ideally an aperture in the middle of the range of your lens for my 20 millimeters will be f8
with these settings in aperture priority my shutter speed is one over eight let's take a shot
the image looks good but now we need to add
neutral density filters let me grab my nd calculator app one over eight with a 10 stops
would mean a 2 minutes and 8 seconds exposure let's do it
over 30 seconds I will need my remote shutter release of course and I will use this
10 stops screw on nd filter let me close the viewfinder let me go into manual mode let me set
my shutter speed on the remote shutter release I realized that by the time I did all these settings
the light went down a little bit because the sun is now hiding behind the clouds so
we'll keep my exposure a little longer than what the app suggested three minutes and 30 seconds
you might have noticed that the photo TEE collection has a new entry the respect
nature shirt I designed this t-shirt because I believe that we landscape photographers should be
ambassadors for nature conservancy so spread the word and buy the shirts I appreciate your support
and finally, we got the first shot three minutes and 30 seconds this rough water became silky
but not necessarily we want to have such a long exposure so how can we reduce the exposure length
without changing filter let me show it to you I removed my 10 stops
and I will reassess the exposure now at iso 64 one over six but if I want to reduce the exposure
I will need a much faster base shutter speed I can achieve this result by increasing
my iso for instance at ISO 400 I have one over 40, wath this exposure
will become with the 10 stops with the 10 stops ND my final exposure will be 25 seconds
so we reduced quite a lot the exposure length let's see how this will look in real life same
process manual I will now need the remote shutter release right now and I started my exposure
you can see that uh at 25 seconds we still have the silky effect but let's say
that i want to reduce the exposure even more what else can i do and of course i can increase the iso
even more i can compromise a little bit my ideal aperture and open the aperture ring a little bit
so let's see what is the fastest base shutter speed that we can get so unfortunately the light
is not cooperating because uh it's getting darker the sun went behind the mountains now
nevertheless i'm stretching it iso 1600 and aperture 4.5 this will give me a base shutter
speed of 1 over 200 that with the 10 stops ND will become just five seconds Let's try!
so the final effect in this case in this scene didn't change very much unfortunately because
there's too much white water but i'm sure that you got the point and i'm also sure
that you realized by now that we can use the same method but on the opposite side closing the
aperture in order to achieve longer exposures i like to spend a few seconds uh to mention
the pros and the cons of the square system versus the circular screw on system in my
opinion if you are just trying out you are not thinking to invest in long exposure photography
in the future but you want to have the option to take some longer exposure photos here and there
possibly the single screw-on circular nd filter will be enough minimal gear minimal weight
minimal investment and you're good to go if instead you are thinking that long exposure
photography can be something that you want to build on that you want to develop in the future
possibly the square filter systems will give you more option as you can stack multiple filters at
the same time you can use graduated filters as well you can also combine these systems with the
circle polarized filters so this possibly is a much more complete solution for your long
exposure photography i also want to mention that there are some magnetic filters that are stackable
i will be testing some of these filters in the future but the most important thing that i want
to tell you is always invest in good quality gear remember that the quality of your images will be
always limited by the quality of your worst piece of gear so if you have a fantastic camera and you
have a fantastic lens but you put a really bad filter in front of it image quality will be bad
and this is all for today i hope you enjoyed this episode i hope that was
useful for you enjoy nature respect nature thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video