Morning gold at Bau Rouge beach - long exposure with the Hoya ND 400 filter

Saturday was the first sunny day here after one week on unstopping rain.
This bad weather complicates my work about shooting gardens and pools and i have a very few time for personnal images. I just did a very short visit to the sea in the morning before a pool session planned during the week but reported because of the rain.

Note : If you're interested in long exposure photography, you can have a look at some tips i've posted here.

Increasing my long exposures collection - one more with the Hoya ND 400

Le Pradet near Cap Garonne

I don't know why but that's something i've always loved to do : Returning often to the same place and capturing the same frames under different lights ...

Yesterday i started the week before 5 am because i had to be in Le Pradet to make some shots of the main city beach at dawn time. A few hours later, my job was terminated and i moved to this wilder place and took this one plus a few ones with waves breaking on these rocks.

For this one i used two filters : the Hoya ND 400 to give me the 20s exposure under the strong light and a Hitech GND to give a little more pop to the foreground.

A long exposure under the clouds and some tips about long exposures

Le Pradet near Cap Garonne in Provence

An other one with the Hoya ND 400 filter giving a 90 seconds exposure in this early and cloudy morning.

Some days ago i received an email from a reader of my french website asking how to determine the exposure time in this kind of images.

On most DSLRs the exposure metering stops at 30s. What to do when you need more ?
First, if you're not familiar with long exposures you can try the scientific method :) Increase the lens aperture (decrease the number) and/or the ISO speed until you reach some values where your camera can meter. Then return to your real settings and try a little extrapolation. If your camera says 25s at f14 and ISO 400 you can try a 100s exposure at f14 and ISO 100, but it's an approximative value.
With digital and when the light is stable you can first try your scientificaly computed settings, look at the histogram and adjust. But at dusk time for example the light can decrease rapidly. If you try a 90  seconds exposure, look at the histogram and find it too much on the left you will want to try 120  seconds but  it will probably be too late and increasing the exposure length will just increase the digital noise in your files ...

So my real advice would be : try, practice, learn to know the light until you become good at guessing the right settings without iterating tries.

Playing with the Hoya ND 400 filter in full light

Winter morning at Bau Rouge beach - Provence

The Hoya ND 400 filter multiply the exposure time by around 500. So it can be difficult to use in low light but it can give some exposure around the minute when used in full day light.
The photo above was done in the early morning in january.

 

LINKS:
My seascapes photo gallery.
All my images done with the Hoya ND 400.
All my photos of Bau Rouge beach.

A grey time

Coastline along the Presqu'île de Giens

A colorful winter afternoon on the Mediterranean coast

This image was taken the same day that the one in my previous post but one or two hours before. When i arrived on the place, the sky was just of a beautiful deep blue and the rocks had their usual yellow tint. Some minutes after some white clouds came and started to hide the sun in my back and then the rocks became really more red and orange.
I took two long exposures for this image : 40s and a little more than 60s.
The final photo is the result of some manual blending and true hdr work.

Vivid colors and long exposure plus one happy feature

Long exposure of some rocks bathing in the Mediterranean sea.

This one is the most recent of my long exposure of rocks bathing in the Mediterranean waves collection. Sometimes, the photographer needs a little luck, capturing such vivid colors and keeping the water perfectly smooth is not always easy.

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Natural threat : cloudy sky over the Mediterranean sea

FishHack, another blogger has just featured this image in his blog and he asked me if i liked his choice.
I mention it here because i really like his choice. This image is one of my big fav from this year. It was done in May. The day before, the meteo said that weather will be very fine during the next days and then i decided to be on the beach before dawn to be able to capture some soft and beautiful blue and pink tones ...
So i woke up before 3 am, drove to the sea threw a little fog and once on the beach i discovered that the weather was not be exactly what i was expecting. I was a little disappointed during a short time but decided to stay and try to catch some skyscapes over the sea. I did two when the sun was just rising and this one a short time later because i noticed the clear blue in the water contrasting with the gray sea and sky. The first two are probably more beautiful because of the rising sun but i think this one is my real fav, probably because it makes me really feel the atmosphere of this morning.

Color is back

Vivid morning on the Mediterranean sea

After two black and white shots, it was time to come back to my more usual work :)

Autumn on the sea - black and white

Rocks in the Mediterranean waves

Here, it's raining for days and days, so i work on some of my previous images.
This one is from the first days of october.
138 seconds exposure.

Still

That's one of my long exposures from August, just processed because since i'm back from Corsica i'm too busy with administrative things and file processing.

Same place, other light, other shot

Récifs in the Mediterranean sea - Le Pradet

Just one month ago, i've posted an other view of these rocks in the Mediterranean waves.
This morning, i went to the same place before dawn. Around 8 am the sky was really blue and i could make this new shot with deep some blue water.

Some other tones

Mediterranean vapors large view

Long exposure (more than 70s) on the Mediterranean sea at dusk time.
Usually this kind of shots is done in black and white and mostly with a strong contrast. Here, i've prefered to keep a few colors and some very soft tones.

One minute for the sea

Recifs in the Mediterranean sea at Le Pradet - Provence

Another long exposure in full daylight.
Don't miss the large view.

Colors and shapes

Rocks in the Mediterranean sea

Long exposure in full day light.

Long exposure in full daylight with the Hoya ND 400 filter

Full Mediterranean colors large view

The Hoya ND 400 filter is a ND (neutral density) filter which reduces the light entering the lens by 9 f stops. That means that exposure time is multiplied by 512. In other words if your shutter speed without any filter was 1/30s, with the filter the shutter speed will be around 17s.

As you could notice, for this springtime i do many seascapes, mostly with long exposures. Without any filters, such exposure times are only possible some few moments at dawn and dusk time. The ND 400 is a good tool to increase the time available for long exposures and such shots with scenes a little more lightned can be beautiful and unusual.
Of course, with or without filter, shooting scapes at noon won't give stunning images but a strong ND filter can open some creative doors to capture beautiful lights with an unusual style.

Last point : The ND 400 is a very dark piece of glass (i could say black) and when it's on the lens you don't see anything in the viewfinder. So it's not for point and shot photography. You have to set up the tripod and the camera, frame without filter, lock everything on the tripod, install the filter, shoot, remove the filter and so on.