Hi,.. I am going on a photography field trip where there will waterfalls. It is a day light event. I will want slow my camera down for the waterfalls. I am going to give the Cokin Filter system a try. What filters would be good for that sitituation.
@zeuszen - Wow,.. a little pricy I see. Right now that is somewhat out of my budget right now. I will have to work some other method for now. Thank you for your info.
If you are looking to get "smooth" water, you'll want exposures of 1 second or more. In order to get exposures this long in daylight, you can be looking at needing six to 10 stops of reduction. Example:
We have a daylight exposure of 1/100 @ f/8 @ 100 ISO, and we want 1 second or more. We can reduce aperture, go to f/16. That will get us to 1/25s. You'll need an additional five stops, in this case, to reach 1 second.
B+W makes high-density filters that are (relatively) economical. I have a six-stop and a ten-stop for this kind of work. One caution here. With a ten-stop filter in place, you will not be focusing through the lens.
FWIW, remember that it is possible to shoot multiple images and combine in post to imitate a longer exposure. The technique is the same as used to stack astro images. So if you can only get to 1 second and want 10 seconds, take ten images and stack in post.
Hi, I'm a newbie in photography. I just bought a Nikon D5100 and a circular polarizer. WOuld you please let me know what are the most usual settings used for great photos in daylight-specifically what shutter speed and f stops you reccommend for regular photos? I know water needs longer shutter speeds and so on. But let's say I'm in forest or in beach or out in the park @ 11 am, what settings do you suggest to use?
And if I need a filter, would it be worthy if I don't want to spend more than $50 on it?
These guys have a little bit better price on filters than you will likely find at the big shops-
2filter.com
All they sell are filters so it is pretty easy to get someone on the phone there who knows what works well for a particular use or budget. I called them the other day when I was looking for a 105mm Circular Polarizer and the woman I spoke with was very helpful. She didn't have what I wanted in stock, but was able to tell me she personally measures both Lee and B+W CPs and the thickness was exactly the same on both. So I went with a B+W over a Lee from another source and saved myself $70 by going confidently with that brand. Not sure I would have gotten that info with a call to B&H despite their usual good service...
