Big Stopper

Downtown ManhattanTaken using the Lee Big Stopper, 20 second exposure, f / 8.0, ISO 50.

Finally got to play around with my "necessary" purchases for my upcoming trip.  I've always liked the look of long exposures taken at night.  The waves blend together to form almost a foggy like look for the water.  I've been seeing a lot of landscape pictures taken with these effects during the day, so I bought myself a Lee Big Stopper ND filter.  It's a 10 stop neutral density filter.  It reduces the amount of light coming into your camera, so that you can increase your shutter speed by 10 stops.

The above pic was taken with a 20 second shutter speed at f/ 8.0 and a 50 ISO.  Obviously I am neurotic enough to where my shaky hands make a tripod necessary for this setup.  I didn't think the clouds were moving all that much, but it looks like they were, even in the span of 20 seconds.  I set up the shot, metered it at f/ 8.0 in automatic, which gave me a 1/60th shutter speed.  Then I threw the camera into manual, turned off autofocus, dropped in the filter, and dropped the shutter speed to 20 seconds (approximately 10 stops).

Downtown ManhattanTaken using the Lee Big Stopper, 10 second exposure, f / 8.0, ISO 50

Added a few filters to this one.  I'll keep an eye out for the clouds and waves the next few days.  I have a few more ideas where I think a daytime long exposure would look nice.

I really liked watching this video, which sold me on the idea of a drop in filter system instead of a screw in filter system.  As you can probably guess, I'm already thinking about getting some of the graduated filters as well, but I think I'll have fun for now playing with this filter.  As always, comments, even anonymous ones, are welcome.

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