Another method of removing subjects from a monument or park etc, take MANY pictures at the same exposure, and Photoshop has an Automate feature that will remove anything dissimilar from the image - it stacks every image and removes all the people or cars that change within each frame and it only keeps what stays static in your images
disadvantage (or just difference, depending on what you want) here is that you don't get that nice effect on the clouds, and also on cloudy days you have varying light so that some of the specs that it automatically removes people from is still looking somewhat weird. Advantage though is that things like the flag looks nice and that you can chose the colour of the traffic light.
I just ordered a 10 stop ND filter to start doing time lapse photography. Idea of setting my camera and relaxing while the exposure gets taken. Better than golf!
The main problem why this was so hard is not only that there is traffic, but that there is slow traffic with a traffic light. This means an uneven distribution of especially the tail and brake lights, as people tend to roughly end up in the same spots when they stop. A friend of mine experimented with holding a neutral black sheet of paper in front of the camera whenever there was too much of the stuff he wanted to remove, reduced the contrast a bit but made the overall result look so much better.
Shang-Hsien Yang not sure that it's a mirrorless vs DSLR problem, the Sony A7 and A7r suffered from it, as did the Fuji XT-1. I just think certain cameras are more prone to it than others, but I don't know for certain - not sure it's ever been properly tested
The original a7 and a7r suffered light leakage from the mount (which in my opinion is a lot more irritating than leakage from the OVF). Fortunately it is rectified in 2nd and 3rd generation models. I am not familiar with the XT1 though.
0:25 99% of photographers probably already have one of those, because all the water in the world seems to look like a thick fog when I see pictures of it. - IT'S TIME TO STOP
One of the reasons I stop taking photos since 1981...(expt. family/vacations). Everything was shot in every single angle/situation/light/sound...sound? Yes it's so funny! If you see a guitarist playing a solo on stage the people will make one pic after another...
@@StudioBonn buy a drone. New perspective that no human has ever been able to capture "up" till now. Back to your comment, I am new to photography and have always looked at it similarly to you. I'm still moving forward with the hobby since the advancements in technology have opened up possibilities previously next to impossible. Life is short and you are unlikely to do something that no other has done, doesn't mean to stop doing things that you enjoy...
No matter how long the exposure is - you will NOT get rid of the cars. Simply cause the cars are there for a specific fraction of time and will leave an according imprint. I think you'd get the best result with 3-4 'normal' photos and then 3-4 2 min pictures. use the long exposure for the overall looks and the short pictures to get rid of any cars/pedestrians and to get a sharp look on moving stuff like the palm trees (they look really distracting to me).
I think the problem is because of cars with lights. If you would do the same photo in the middle of a day, you could get a better result. Or better yet, take 100 standard captures without ND, and stack them together and take a median value of each pixel. It should remove basically everything from the photo that is non stationary. I am not sure about photoshop, but you can do that in many astrophotography packages.
As a Charleston native (and still living here) I still love seeing Charleston on the screen :) Great tips. I agree, the epic landscapes are limited here haha!
Tyler Edwards but we make up for it with some super charming architecture and beautiful historic locations (historic for the USA at least). Glad to see other charlestonians on here
This is very informational and since I am just starting out with my Canon M50 I would like to look for ND filters next for landscape photographs. Thank you!
You mentioned that F8 is the sweet spot for that lens to keep everything as sharp as possible to avoid introducing defraction. Is there somewhere I could learn more about this? I'd love to know the sweet spots for my lenses for different settings, what does defraction do, when does it begin to be introduced, how to tell for different lenses etc.... Where can I learn more? Thanks!
Diffraction causes the rays of light to form a pattern of a round spot (Airy disk) with concentric circles around it instead of being focused to an ideal point. This means that sharpness is reduced, because light is reaching pixels that it "shouldn't" have reached and so pixels are blurred together. Diffraction is always present, but it is starting to blur an image when the Airy disk is of the same size as a single pixel (or larger). The diffraction spot diameter is dependent on the aperture and on the wavelength of light: its radius is 1.22*(wavelength)*(f#). So overall, the effect of diffraction on the image is dependent on the lens aperture and the pixel size. For example, for a sensor with about 4 micron pixels (like a 7DII or 5dsr), the diffraction spot reaches the pixel size at f/# 2.8, 3.2, 3.5 for red (0.6um), green (0.53um) and blue (0.47um) respectively, so even at f/2.8 a sensor like that is affected by diffraction, however the effect is still small. It is common to say that an optical system is "diffraction limited" when it is being sampled at half the diameter of the Airy disk (i.e. when the diffraction spot diameter covers two pixels), so for the the same example that happens at f/# 5.6, 6.3, 7.1 for R, G, B. Also, this is commonly referenced to green light, since that is the dominant component of sunlight (and both our eyes and the camera sensor array are composed of 50% "green" detectors), so in this example we would say the sensor is diffraction limited from f/6.3 and up. This means that using a smaller aperture than f/6.3 on this sensor will result in reduced sharpness, and that is getting worse the smaller the aperture. At f/16 this effect is very noticeable, with images looking very soft compared to, say, f/8, or even f/11. f/8 is a bit softer than f/5.6, but it takes "pixel peeping" to notice. If you want to know the diffraction limit of your sensor, you can do the same calculation with your pixel size (pixel pitch). Smaller pixels are more affected by diffraction.
Wow thank you, I'm going to have to try this out with my lenses. I think I have a simple understanding of it after reading your response. Is there somewhere specific you learned this from or just general knowledge?
A combination of basic knowledge from optical physics classes taken as part of my degree and some reading about astrophotography. Note that the sensor + lens optical system can be limited by other factors that may be more severe than diffraction. For example if a lens is not optically excellent it is aberration limited, so stopping down to reduce the aberration can improve quality, even if the diffraction limit has been exceeded. That is because in this case the poor optical quality is the limiting factor rather than diffraction, so this lens is always blurrier than the diffraction limit. This is the reason that with older/cheaper lenses (inferior optical quality) and/or older cameras (lower resolution), it is often said to stop down to around f/8 for the best quality possible. With long telephoto lenses, even excellent ones, atmospheric distortion can be the strongest limiting factor, especially if the subject is far from the camera, so in these instances the system will be limited by atmospheric "seeing" rather than diffraction. Usually with very long focal lengths, like in telescopes, this is the dominating factor. In the case of a good quality lens and no significant atmospheric issues (for a certain focal length), the limiting factor is diffraction, so exceeding it significantly will easily show in the image.
I think one of the important things to note about exposure photography is that dark objects in scene are a kind of void that act like a mini-canvas that can be made light wherever light goes over it. Light objects in scene (or rather, when light has "painted" a dark area and moved away) are a lot harder or impossible to make dark again. Things like tail lights are bright sources of light will be super prominent and won't go away even with much longer exposures. In a way, this is usually why we can't see the unlit side of the moon during the day when it's not fully "lit" because the light from our own atmosphere paints over the dark image of the moon as it does with the surrounding void of space. Optics are fun. If you really wanted a scene without moving objects, it's probably more worth your while shooting a movie and post-processing it for non-moving textures?
I barely have the patience for a 30-second shutter, let alone 16 minutes. I suppose you'd also have to count on the light not changing? Or would that not have much impact with the 15-stop filter?
Don Evans go to the article in the description and you can see some before and after. The light does change a lot and that’s some of the fun, you can minimize shadows or sometimes get more interesting lighting effects.
Really enjoyed this video , like your pace and style and its good to see someone using screw-in filters, I'm told a lot of the Vloggers are given Lee filters to "promote" - for people like me - retired, amateur -they are way outside my budget. I have a nine and a three stop (screw-in) which i sometimes stack and put to good effect in landscapes but I've never tried an exposure that long or tried out a city scape. _ BTW I use "PhotoPills" (IOS) to calculate the exposure, I'm sure there are plenty of other good apps out there. Cheers Chris
At f22 a shutter speed of 1/8 sec will equate to a shutter speed/time of 64 seconds with a 10 stop ND and 2048 seconds (34 minutes) with a 15 stop ND. Those of us brought up on manual cameras can do these calculations in our head almost without thinking about it. With film you also had to allow for what was know as recoprocity failure where exposure times had to be even longer than indicated.
I use welding glass. It's a cheaper was to go but you do have t watch for colour casting (green). Though you can white balance that to a certain extent.
It's our favorite tripod we've ever used. We took a bunch of really expensive tripods out on the road with us during Elia Locardi's Photographing the World 3 production and the Benro was better than anything else we used. Can't recommend them enough
Thank's for the reply! Yep, I have been using it for 2 weeks and so far so good, I find it incredibly efficient and quick to set up, not to mention sturdy. Happy camper!
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it drove me crazy to see a camera on a tripod with the strap blowing in the breeze. That's introducing a bit of motion to the camera and for long exposures, reducing sharpness. Great video and informative, though! I'd add that on a busy street, cars will be in frame fro the whole exposure, so it won't be possible to completely get rid of them in camera.
the problem with the big stopper is that movement will cummulate in the depth of field. That mean that far away movement is more static than nearer movement. Nearer movement is faster and blurrier.
You should be using film! Nonlinear exposure sensitivity, you'd have to use hours long exposure to get these shots with the same glass and situation! The only issue is the car lights would show up quicker.
I live in Charleston, S.C. the thumb nail caught my attention. I've only taken a few pics of St.Michaels , I do have a 15 stop filter, i bought it for the eclipse so ill have to go try this. I wish u showed how you skewed the image. I'm horrible in photoshop. Good video, hope you got other pictures from Charleston. Robert L. Ripley from "Ripley's Believe it or not" said when visiting Charleston and seeing the intersection of Broad and Meeting, " You could mail you wedding invitations the same day ( Post Office ), get married the same day ( St.Michaels ) and file for divorce the same day ( County courthouse ".
I was actually wondering if the trick would work because no matter how long the image exposure time there are still people and cars in the image even for a short period of time, they all sort of mix up and blur which is what I saw even with the 14 min exposure, but still pretty cool. Even then as LensFlair Photo described, a cheaper alternative is taking multiple shots at the same position and exposure and blend them in post.
Nice test. You should have REDUCED the EXPOSURE TIME instead of extending to 16 minute... Main issue of you ghosting is the Traffic light and the stopped cars' red tail lights. I believe you should have timed the traffic light, and to set the extended exposure to that specific duration. Firing the shoot when it turns green...avoiding the red light -Look at you 8 min shoot, the red light on the traffic light is stronger the the green light... thus indicating there was more time spent with the traffic light on RED than on green....- This would have prevented the ghosting effect on the red tail traffic lights, that was imprinted in the image, since vehicles were "stopped" at the red traffic light for several minutes... thus leaving an imprint on the recored image. The filters ND factors would have been strong enough to avoid ghosting images of regular traffic passing by as well as pedestrians. When you "add" a RED LIGHT STOP due to the traffic light, all cars have stepped into their breaks, activating the rear stop red tail light, which is the main ghost in your picture.
thanks for the vid. in 14 minutes, give or take, of post processing with masks using mulitple images, you could achieve a better outcome without having to wait for the long exposure.,
Nice video! And thanks for the tip on the "- -" setting on D850! I have missed that one, and I do not own a traded remote yet. So this will be really helpful!!!
I'm curious, when doing that long of an exposure, did you turn on the LE noise reduction in camera? Also Lee filters has an app that you can DL and you put in your base settings, then it tells you what your time needs to be, when using a 6 stop, 10 stop or 15 stop. Plus it has a built in timer as well.
Candice Watson I didn’t turn off the long exposure noise reduction but I believe that is only applied to the jpeg. When shooting in raw it won’t apply anything to the file.
Long exposure noise reduction is absolutely applied to RAW as well. It works by capturing a dark frame with the same exposure settings and subtracting that from the previous picture. i.e. it takes twice as long to shoot a photo, you would definitely have noticed if it was on as your 15 minute exposure would have taken 30 minutes to capture.
Mikkel Schmidt hmmmm, Ill have to check that out. I def didn’t wait 16 extra minutes. I wonder how bad the noise becomes when shooting at iso 32-100 with long exposures. It would have to be worse than native iso 1600 for me to really even start to care. The quality on all these new cameras is so freaking good that I wouldn’t find it worth going through another exposure just to reduce the noise a little. I’ve printed poster sized images off the D600 at iso 1600 and it’s barely noticeable (you see the grain more on a screen than print).
I don't think it's anything to worry about at 32-100 to be honest. I've only done a minute on my D750 at ISO 100, but there's nothing to see what so ever.
Mikkel Schmidt I was thinking that it was.. otherwise what would be the point in having it, unless you just shoot jpeg. I read that you can also do a “black screen” as a last shot with the same settings, and then in PS use the subtract blending mode to take out the hot pixels. Better than waiting another 15 min for the camera to apply the NR. I have not personally used that method though.
Great video but why not shoot f8 or f11 with the 15 stop? You'd still get a pretty long exposure and the scene should still be in focus and sharp. F22 on most of my lenses looks pretty terrible.
Would the camera go past 30 seconds if you had the camera on aperture priority with the filter on? Would it do that 8 minute exposure automatically that way?
While most people use faster film at night, I used to shoot rural night photography with ASA 25 film at F 11 and a 20 min exposure was the norm. I still prefer film for night photography, but most of the great film of the past is gone and it is rare to find any film slower than ASA 50 and even that is rare.
My Lee adapter ring is reflecting onto my photos when using my Tokina 11-20mm at less than (11mm -) 16mm. Is it possible, get an 82mm WA screw on ten stop to combat this.....
If you want to make an image look like real life, take a normal (short exposure) shot. If you want to make it look like a studio, do an extremely long exposure.
Interesting and nice video! I would be getting out of bed early and probably have lots of time to shoot a picture between cars moving by (tested and proven) :-)
Wouldn't median stacking be a better method to completely remove the distractions. A long exposure will still be affected by anything that crosses the field of view
So lets say you start the sixteen minute exposure and then someone decides to park an M1A2 Abrams Main battle tank in front of the camera for 15 minutes. Would this filter hide the 70 tons of heavy metal?
If you capture an Abrams tank puling up in a US city, you should immediately stop taking timelapse and start filming video and photos....make sure you hashtag #CNN and start licensing that footage :)
@@Fedaykin24 "The M1A1 Abrams main battle tank is one of the toughest and most lethal killing machines on the battlefield today. Yes, sir! It's main objective? Go out and rip open the enemy armor like a can opener with an attitude!" -Honorary Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey
You need an external power supply for the camera, and a filter that allows for a 2-4 hours shot. That will remove car lights, cars, pedestrians and anything that doesn't stay longer than 5-15 minutes depending on the object's own brightness, so likely even temporarily parked cars. Rather stack two or three filters instead of wasting money on mega strong filters.
Andrey G you should buy the 82 and then use step down rings. This filter works on our Nikon but also our smaller gh5 lenses. I’ve had the square filters and it’s such a pain carrying around the mounting bracket in my opinion.
I have and will probably do a video on that soon. The point of this video was to get it all in camera with no photoshopping required PLUS I got the streaky clouds which isn't possible with fast shutter photos.
Just remind some 19 century photography, when exposure always took minutes to finish. And you cant see any one one the panorma photo. People need a additionnal body support for portait photoes, and a nanny is always necessary to calm the baby if you want to take their photoes
The fine art world makes no sense. Lots of photos sell for ridiculous prices that aren't all that exciting or technically difficult. That's art for you
Perhaps one should ask oneself: If art is that easy why don't I sell my pictures for high prices? The secret of art is having new ideas and daring things others wouldn't dare to do themselves (but would like to do). And BTW that was not the point. The point was that smooth, silky waters are nothing to get excited about (nor are they technically difficult, there is even a setting in your iPhone to achieve that result).
PolarPro Quartzline doesn't offer a 52mm.. who wants to buy adapter rings and huge lenses for a small camera..? not me. Why don't they offer a 52mm. (it is such a common size)
Did everyone simply miss where he explains stacking as an option near the beginning of the video, or do all of the Captain Obvious's of the world simply feel the need to flex their lack of perceptive skills?
Not much to shoot at that time of day? You can visually see an exploding cumulonimbus cloud in the background (6:10)where its bound to have some thunder/lightning and perhaps even some hail. Thats what I would be going after lol
Yep, 10 mins after filming that timelapse the whole sky got dark and it started raining. I did one final photograph before packing up and a bolt of lightening hit the top of the church steeple and I about pissed myself. Oh how I wish that would have happened 90 seconds earlier! -P
The only change to the final picture I would make if I were doing it would be to have taken a good still shot and then transferred the flag from that shot onto the long exposure shot. The American flag is all blurred.
how to photo: 1. get a very expensive camera. 2. get some very expensive filters. 3. discuss getting a very expensive lens and some other gear. 4. shoot a couple photos. 5. edit on expensive app. 6. sell a kidney. (maybe this should come first..) 7. repeat.
5. Not as expensive as you think, I saw it was about $10 a month. For a Pro this is chump change. You probably spend more on junk food per month than this.
hey, noob question here. my camera has a lowest native iso of 100 but it can go down to 50. so does it negatively impact the image quality if i shoot with 50 iso?
Ideally you would shoot at your camera's lowest ISO for the absolute cleanest image quality. However, in this case, gaining longer shutter speeds was more important to me than using the extended low ISO so I went to Low1 (iso 32). With most modern cameras, I wouldn't think twice shooting between ISO 32 - ISO 400. They are all going to be ridiculously clean and no one will notice when printed or posted small to the web.
It's not for me. I think the shot was more interesting with the traffic. So, for me, I'm finding that I do not need a nd filter for my type of photography.
Nope, that's the point of the neutral density filter. If you want to remove the cars by layering a bunch of photos, you can do that too but you will have to spend a bunch of time in photoshop and you won't get the same effect in the clouds.
Another method of removing subjects from a monument or park etc, take MANY pictures at the same exposure, and Photoshop has an Automate feature that will remove anything dissimilar from the image - it stacks every image and removes all the people or cars that change within each frame and it only keeps what stays static in your images
disadvantage (or just difference, depending on what you want) here is that you don't get that nice effect on the clouds, and also on cloudy days you have varying light so that some of the specs that it automatically removes people from is still looking somewhat weird. Advantage though is that things like the flag looks nice and that you can chose the colour of the traffic light.
doing median is other option
You can use "median" or "mean" in photoshop to get the same effect AND you can still use the viewfinder. With 10-15 stops ND it is completely black...
You can also mask out what you want to affect in photoshop, so you can pick any frame you want for the flag - clouds - traffic lights etc.
@@joakimolsson1024 Added benefit of that method is that it also reduces noise quite a bit, the more images you blend.
If you do not want people or cars in your architecture picture, do it early morning on Sunday.
I just ordered a 10 stop ND filter to start doing time lapse photography. Idea of setting my camera and relaxing while the exposure gets taken. Better than golf!
The main problem why this was so hard is not only that there is traffic, but that there is slow traffic with a traffic light. This means an uneven distribution of especially the tail and brake lights, as people tend to roughly end up in the same spots when they stop.
A friend of mine experimented with holding a neutral black sheet of paper in front of the camera whenever there was too much of the stuff he wanted to remove, reduced the contrast a bit but made the overall result look so much better.
Remember to close the viewfinder cover (or add one) when doing long exposures, otherwise you run the risk of getting a light leak on your image.
Peter Yates one of the reasons why I switched to mirrorless
Shang-Hsien Yang not sure that it's a mirrorless vs DSLR problem, the Sony A7 and A7r suffered from it, as did the Fuji XT-1. I just think certain cameras are more prone to it than others, but I don't know for certain - not sure it's ever been properly tested
The original a7 and a7r suffered light leakage from the mount (which in my opinion is a lot more irritating than leakage from the OVF). Fortunately it is rectified in 2nd and 3rd generation models. I am not familiar with the XT1 though.
If you have a DSLR. If you have a ML then it's not an issue. Plus, some high-end DSLRs have a built-in OVF shade (like the Nikon D850).
0:25 99% of photographers probably already have one of those, because all the water in the world seems to look like a thick fog when I see pictures of it. - IT'S TIME TO STOP
Michael Angelo H. Hate that look
H3H3?
Papa Bless Filthy Frank
One of the reasons I stop taking photos since 1981...(expt. family/vacations). Everything was shot in every single angle/situation/light/sound...sound? Yes it's so funny! If you see a guitarist playing a solo on stage the people will make one pic after another...
@@StudioBonn buy a drone. New perspective that no human has ever been able to capture "up" till now. Back to your comment, I am new to photography and have always looked at it similarly to you. I'm still moving forward with the hobby since the advancements in technology have opened up possibilities previously next to impossible. Life is short and you are unlikely to do something that no other has done, doesn't mean to stop doing things that you enjoy...
No matter how long the exposure is - you will NOT get rid of the cars. Simply cause the cars are there for a specific fraction of time and will leave an according imprint.
I think you'd get the best result with 3-4 'normal' photos and then 3-4 2 min pictures. use the long exposure for the overall looks and the short pictures to get rid of any cars/pedestrians and to get a sharp look on moving stuff like the palm trees (they look really distracting to me).
I think the problem is because of cars with lights. If you would do the same photo in the middle of a day, you could get a better result. Or better yet, take 100 standard captures without ND, and stack them together and take a median value of each pixel. It should remove basically everything from the photo that is non stationary. I am not sure about photoshop, but you can do that in many astrophotography packages.
Part of the issue is brake lights, when sitting at an intersection you just sit on the brakes and they stay lit.
Daytime Running Lamps are required on new cars.
$230 for a filter? I'll just stack two of the ND 8's I have, thank you.
Don Vanco They're not $115 each, right? 😉
You’d prob get major vignetting. I tried that and you could see the metal rings at 24-26 mm
I'll take the crop and keep the cash. But good point.
Still, this price seems unjustified.
Patrick Hall I’ve definitely had issues with that at wide angles.
Don Vanco or you could just take a whole bunch of exposures and let photoshop delete all the differences.
As a Charleston native (and still living here) I still love seeing Charleston on the screen :) Great tips. I agree, the epic landscapes are limited here haha!
Tyler Edwards but we make up for it with some super charming architecture and beautiful historic locations (historic for the USA at least). Glad to see other charlestonians on here
This is very informational and since I am just starting out with my Canon M50 I would like to look for ND filters next for landscape photographs. Thank you!
Charleston is such a beautiful city! These are great tips, almost magic; I never imagined this sort of application using an ND filter, thanks!
You mentioned that F8 is the sweet spot for that lens to keep everything as sharp as possible to avoid introducing defraction. Is there somewhere I could learn more about this? I'd love to know the sweet spots for my lenses for different settings, what does defraction do, when does it begin to be introduced, how to tell for different lenses etc.... Where can I learn more? Thanks!
Diffraction causes the rays of light to form a pattern of a round spot (Airy disk) with concentric circles around it instead of being focused to an ideal point. This means that sharpness is reduced, because light is reaching pixels that it "shouldn't" have reached and so pixels are blurred together. Diffraction is always present, but it is starting to blur an image when the Airy disk is of the same size as a single pixel (or larger). The diffraction spot diameter is dependent on the aperture and on the wavelength of light: its radius is 1.22*(wavelength)*(f#). So overall, the effect of diffraction on the image is dependent on the lens aperture and the pixel size.
For example, for a sensor with about 4 micron pixels (like a 7DII or 5dsr), the diffraction spot reaches the pixel size at f/# 2.8, 3.2, 3.5 for red (0.6um), green (0.53um) and blue (0.47um) respectively, so even at f/2.8 a sensor like that is affected by diffraction, however the effect is still small. It is common to say that an optical system is "diffraction limited" when it is being sampled at half the diameter of the Airy disk (i.e. when the diffraction spot diameter covers two pixels), so for the the same example that happens at f/# 5.6, 6.3, 7.1 for R, G, B. Also, this is commonly referenced to green light, since that is the dominant component of sunlight (and both our eyes and the camera sensor array are composed of 50% "green" detectors), so in this example we would say the sensor is diffraction limited from f/6.3 and up.
This means that using a smaller aperture than f/6.3 on this sensor will result in reduced sharpness, and that is getting worse the smaller the aperture. At f/16 this effect is very noticeable, with images looking very soft compared to, say, f/8, or even f/11. f/8 is a bit softer than f/5.6, but it takes "pixel peeping" to notice.
If you want to know the diffraction limit of your sensor, you can do the same calculation with your pixel size (pixel pitch). Smaller pixels are more affected by diffraction.
Wow thank you, I'm going to have to try this out with my lenses. I think I have a simple understanding of it after reading your response. Is there somewhere specific you learned this from or just general knowledge?
A combination of basic knowledge from optical physics classes taken as part of my degree and some reading about astrophotography.
Note that the sensor + lens optical system can be limited by other factors that may be more severe than diffraction. For example if a lens is not optically excellent it is aberration limited, so stopping down to reduce the aberration can improve quality, even if the diffraction limit has been exceeded. That is because in this case the poor optical quality is the limiting factor rather than diffraction, so this lens is always blurrier than the diffraction limit. This is the reason that with older/cheaper lenses (inferior optical quality) and/or older cameras (lower resolution), it is often said to stop down to around f/8 for the best quality possible.
With long telephoto lenses, even excellent ones, atmospheric distortion can be the strongest limiting factor, especially if the subject is far from the camera, so in these instances the system will be limited by atmospheric "seeing" rather than diffraction. Usually with very long focal lengths, like in telescopes, this is the dominating factor.
In the case of a good quality lens and no significant atmospheric issues (for a certain focal length), the limiting factor is diffraction, so exceeding it significantly will easily show in the image.
I love Michael James Fox tutorials, he truly knows what he does
I always use the ”median” feature in photoshop. You should do a video on that.
Rob Du Bois that’s a good idea.
I think one of the important things to note about exposure photography is that dark objects in scene are a kind of void that act like a mini-canvas that can be made light wherever light goes over it. Light objects in scene (or rather, when light has "painted" a dark area and moved away) are a lot harder or impossible to make dark again. Things like tail lights are bright sources of light will be super prominent and won't go away even with much longer exposures. In a way, this is usually why we can't see the unlit side of the moon during the day when it's not fully "lit" because the light from our own atmosphere paints over the dark image of the moon as it does with the surrounding void of space. Optics are fun. If you really wanted a scene without moving objects, it's probably more worth your while shooting a movie and post-processing it for non-moving textures?
So key-stoning is similar to parallax? Really good editing and use of filters when photoing. Great idea to use long exposure in traffic areas.
I barely have the patience for a 30-second shutter, let alone 16 minutes. I suppose you'd also have to count on the light not changing? Or would that not have much impact with the 15-stop filter?
Don Evans go to the article in the description and you can see some before and after. The light does change a lot and that’s some of the fun, you can minimize shadows or sometimes get more interesting lighting effects.
He showed the impact in the video.
Really enjoyed this video , like your pace and style and its good to see someone using screw-in filters, I'm told a lot of the Vloggers are given Lee filters to "promote" - for people like me - retired, amateur -they are way outside my budget. I have a nine and a three stop (screw-in) which i sometimes stack and put to good effect in landscapes but I've never tried an exposure that long or tried out a city scape. _ BTW I use "PhotoPills" (IOS) to calculate the exposure, I'm sure there are plenty of other good apps out there. Cheers Chris
At f22 a shutter speed of 1/8 sec will equate to a shutter speed/time of 64 seconds with a 10 stop ND and 2048 seconds (34 minutes) with a 15 stop ND. Those of us brought up on manual cameras can do these calculations in our head almost without thinking about it. With film you also had to allow for what was know as recoprocity failure where exposure times had to be even longer than indicated.
Love the final photo!
I use welding glass. It's a cheaper was to go but you do have t watch for colour casting (green). Though you can white balance that to a certain extent.
How do you like that Benro tripod? I was skeptical at first because if the plastic bits, however so far I am very happy.
It's our favorite tripod we've ever used. We took a bunch of really expensive tripods out on the road with us during Elia Locardi's Photographing the World 3 production and the Benro was better than anything else we used. Can't recommend them enough
Thank's for the reply! Yep, I have been using it for 2 weeks and so far so good, I find it incredibly efficient and quick to set up, not to mention sturdy. Happy camper!
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but it drove me crazy to see a camera on a tripod with the strap blowing in the breeze. That's introducing a bit of motion to the camera and for long exposures, reducing sharpness. Great video and informative, though! I'd add that on a busy street, cars will be in frame fro the whole exposure, so it won't be possible to completely get rid of them in camera.
Wow... Liked the final image.
the problem with the big stopper is that movement will cummulate in the depth of field. That mean that far away movement is more static than nearer movement. Nearer movement is faster and blurrier.
Awesome vid! I rarely break out m y ND filter but this definetely gets me thinking about more uses for it than just creating silky waterfalls. :D
You should be using film! Nonlinear exposure sensitivity, you'd have to use hours long exposure to get these shots with the same glass and situation! The only issue is the car lights would show up quicker.
Very good video, I actually learned a few things...thank you !
I live in Charleston, S.C. the thumb nail caught my attention. I've only taken a few pics of St.Michaels , I do have a 15 stop filter, i bought it for the eclipse so ill have to go try this. I wish u showed how you skewed the image. I'm horrible in photoshop. Good video, hope you got other pictures from Charleston.
Robert L. Ripley from "Ripley's Believe it or not" said when visiting Charleston and seeing the intersection of Broad and Meeting, " You could mail you wedding invitations the same day ( Post Office ), get married the same day ( St.Michaels ) and file for divorce the same day ( County courthouse ".
How interesting...thanks for sharing!
I was actually wondering if the trick would work because no matter how long the image exposure time there are still people and cars in the image even for a short period of time, they all sort of mix up and blur which is what I saw even with the 14 min exposure, but still pretty cool. Even then as LensFlair Photo described, a cheaper alternative is taking multiple shots at the same position and exposure and blend them in post.
Thanks so much for this video. I can't wait to try these techniques!
Cool results, thanks! Looking forward to the next video you mentioned (I love time-lpase with my GoPros)!
cool video. ty. - that eye cyst looks painful
"We're here at 4 - 5 o'clock" A quick look at his watch suggests it's more like 5.45!
Nice test. You should have REDUCED the EXPOSURE TIME instead of extending to 16 minute...
Main issue of you ghosting is the Traffic light and the stopped cars' red tail lights.
I believe you should have timed the traffic light, and to set the extended exposure to that specific duration. Firing the shoot when it turns green...avoiding the red light -Look at you 8 min shoot, the red light on the traffic light is stronger the the green light... thus indicating there was more time spent with the traffic light on RED than on green....-
This would have prevented the ghosting effect on the red tail traffic lights, that was imprinted in the image, since vehicles were "stopped" at the red traffic light for several minutes... thus leaving an imprint on the recored image. The filters ND factors would have been strong enough to avoid ghosting images of regular traffic passing by as well as pedestrians. When you "add" a RED LIGHT STOP due to the traffic light, all cars have stepped into their breaks, activating the rear stop red tail light, which is the main ghost in your picture.
thanks for the vid. in 14 minutes, give or take, of post processing with masks using mulitple images, you could achieve a better outcome without having to wait for the long exposure.,
Nice video!
And thanks for the tip on the "- -" setting on D850! I have missed that one, and I do not own a traded remote yet. So this will be really helpful!!!
I'm curious, when doing that long of an exposure, did you turn on the LE noise reduction in camera? Also Lee filters has an app that you can DL and you put in your base settings, then it tells you what your time needs to be, when using a 6 stop, 10 stop or 15 stop. Plus it has a built in timer as well.
Candice Watson I didn’t turn off the long exposure noise reduction but I believe that is only applied to the jpeg. When shooting in raw it won’t apply anything to the file.
Long exposure noise reduction is absolutely applied to RAW as well. It works by capturing a dark frame with the same exposure settings and subtracting that from the previous picture. i.e. it takes twice as long to shoot a photo, you would definitely have noticed if it was on as your 15 minute exposure would have taken 30 minutes to capture.
Mikkel Schmidt hmmmm, Ill have to check that out. I def didn’t wait 16 extra minutes. I wonder how bad the noise becomes when shooting at iso 32-100 with long exposures. It would have to be worse than native iso 1600 for me to really even start to care. The quality on all these new cameras is so freaking good that I wouldn’t find it worth going through another exposure just to reduce the noise a little. I’ve printed poster sized images off the D600 at iso 1600 and it’s barely noticeable (you see the grain more on a screen than print).
I don't think it's anything to worry about at 32-100 to be honest. I've only done a minute on my D750 at ISO 100, but there's nothing to see what so ever.
Mikkel Schmidt I was thinking that it was.. otherwise what would be the point in having it, unless you just shoot jpeg. I read that you can also do a “black screen” as a last shot with the same settings, and then in PS use the subtract blending mode to take out the hot pixels. Better than waiting another 15 min for the camera to apply the NR. I have not personally used that method though.
Looks like I have to get an ND filter... Great video!
Great video but why not shoot f8 or f11 with the 15 stop? You'd still get a pretty long exposure and the scene should still be in focus and sharp. F22 on most of my lenses looks pretty terrible.
Eric Stadler maybe I don’t understand...that’s exactly what I did. The f22 exposure was with no ND just to see what I could get with no filter.
Patrick Hall my apologies. missed it the first time i watched.
What lens were you using? I am considering a purchase of Tamron 15-30. At one time I had Nikon's 16-35 F4. Sold it. My mistake to have sold it.
Would the camera go past 30 seconds if you had the camera on aperture priority with the filter on? Would it do that 8 minute exposure automatically that way?
fix the flag?
Pvt. Parts these colors dont run 'murica
I like using the 10 stop during a bright day
While most people use faster film at night, I used to shoot rural night photography with ASA 25 film at F 11 and a 20 min exposure was the norm. I still prefer film for night photography, but most of the great film of the past is gone and it is rare to find any film slower than ASA 50 and even that is rare.
My Lee adapter ring is reflecting onto my photos when using my Tokina 11-20mm at less than (11mm -) 16mm. Is it possible, get an 82mm WA screw on ten stop to combat this.....
rest all was really bst knowledge, but, i was hoping, to see 24mm tilt shift effect done by u. in PS.
- thanks
If you want to make an image look like real life, take a normal (short exposure) shot. If you want to make it look like a studio, do an extremely long exposure.
Interesting and nice video! I would be getting out of bed early and probably have lots of time to shoot a picture between cars moving by (tested and proven) :-)
Wouldn't median stacking be a better method to completely remove the distractions. A long exposure will still be affected by anything that crosses the field of view
Well said, I needed that.
i am planning to invest in those ND filters but i have a question. Do we get distortion on wide angel lens with ND filters??
So lets say you start the sixteen minute exposure and then someone decides to park an M1A2 Abrams Main battle tank in front of the camera for 15 minutes. Would this filter hide the 70 tons of heavy metal?
If you capture an Abrams tank puling up in a US city, you should immediately stop taking timelapse and start filming video and photos....make sure you hashtag #CNN and start licensing that footage :)
Thanks for the prompt answer! ;-)
@@Fedaykin24 "The M1A1 Abrams main battle tank is one of the toughest and most lethal killing machines on the battlefield today. Yes, sir! It's main objective? Go out and rip open the enemy armor like a can opener with an attitude!"
-Honorary Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey
Stupid question but holding the shutter open that long does it hurt the camera
did you ever think about doubling up the neutral density filters?
Amazing!
Shouldn't you set shutter timer to, say, two seconds to avoid camera shake?
You need an external power supply for the camera, and a filter that allows for a 2-4 hours shot. That will remove car lights, cars, pedestrians and anything that doesn't stay longer than 5-15 minutes depending on the object's own brightness, so likely even temporarily parked cars. Rather stack two or three filters instead of wasting money on mega strong filters.
This is a really cool video! Thanks for this!
What camera and lens have you used? Thanks
wow that's amazing
i dont know why, but the picture with the corrected vertical lines looks weird to me, not the original. i lose all sense of perspective.
Yeah that's weird, the human eye doesn't see converging lines like you see when a wide angle lens is tilted up
Fstoppers Does that mean I'm a robot?
I personally preferred the original too.
I think this technique will work better to remove people from a mall or plaza scene. Cars are just too big IMO.
The large downside of screw-in filters is that it won't fit different lens sizes
Andrey G you should buy the 82 and then use step down rings. This filter works on our Nikon but also our smaller gh5 lenses. I’ve had the square filters and it’s such a pain carrying around the mounting bracket in my opinion.
But you can't have grad filters with screw in filter, nothing is perfect I guess!
Getting $40 cashback on a $3 filter from ebay isn't a bad deal.
If we can convince them to buy it for 20$ I would see a business model there.
I'm surprised you have not heard of Stacking and median.
I have and will probably do a video on that soon. The point of this video was to get it all in camera with no photoshopping required PLUS I got the streaky clouds which isn't possible with fast shutter photos.
exciting!
Thanks, iso 32 is really impressing
I think it's funny that a 15 minute exposure is the longest exposure you've done. I've done up to 2 hours before lol (doing star trails)
Funny how?
Doesn't an ND 100,000 filter represent 16.6 stops? log (base 2) of 100,000 is 16.6.
Just remind some 19 century photography, when exposure always took minutes to finish. And you cant see any one one the panorma photo. People need a additionnal body support for portait photoes, and a nanny is always necessary to calm the baby if you want to take their photoes
Haha... 5:58 so funny! No cars passing by so you can shoot NOW!
Ha, there was a stop light right there and cars were always piled up
Music sounds familiar - think Mr Taylor uses it or maybe someone else.
Andrew Henning premium beats....lots of people use them and I hear them on television a lot. Can’t recommend them enough
Wish I could do this where I live. I’ve been chased away by building security the moment they see me take out a tripod.
Super silky waters? Did you know: One of the most expensive photographs ever sold was Andreas Gursky's "Rhein II". No silky waters there.
The fine art world makes no sense. Lots of photos sell for ridiculous prices that aren't all that exciting or technically difficult. That's art for you
The dot in a blank piece of paper for $5,000
Perhaps one should ask oneself: If art is that easy why don't I sell my pictures for high prices? The secret of art is having new ideas and daring things others wouldn't dare to do themselves (but would like to do).
And BTW that was not the point. The point was that smooth, silky waters are nothing to get excited about (nor are they technically difficult, there is even a setting in your iPhone to achieve that result).
thats a nice video
PolarPro Quartzline doesn't offer a 52mm.. who wants to buy adapter rings and huge lenses for a small camera..? not me. Why don't they offer a 52mm. (it is such a common size)
Did you expose this at 14 minutes or 16
I live in Charleston!!!
i'll just wake up early , but thanks
perfect-Τέλειο!!!!
Photoshop could have done much better instead of doing all that. Take multiple pics n let photoshop handle the rest
Did everyone simply miss where he explains stacking as an option near the beginning of the video, or do all of the Captain Obvious's of the world simply feel the need to flex their lack of perceptive skills?
Not much to shoot at that time of day? You can visually see an exploding cumulonimbus cloud in the background (6:10)where its bound to have some thunder/lightning and perhaps even some hail. Thats what I would be going after lol
Yep, 10 mins after filming that timelapse the whole sky got dark and it started raining. I did one final photograph before packing up and a bolt of lightening hit the top of the church steeple and I about pissed myself. Oh how I wish that would have happened 90 seconds earlier! -P
The only change to the final picture I would make if I were doing it would be to have taken a good still shot and then transferred the flag from that shot onto the long exposure shot. The American flag is all blurred.
Perfect-τέλειο!!!!
how to photo:
1. get a very expensive camera.
2. get some very expensive filters.
3. discuss getting a very expensive lens and some other gear.
4. shoot a couple photos.
5. edit on expensive app.
6. sell a kidney. (maybe this should come first..)
7. repeat.
Dr. No how do you repeat part 6?
i didnt say it must be yours...
5. Not as expensive as you think, I saw it was about $10 a month. For a Pro this is chump change. You probably spend more on junk food per month than this.
Dr. No so true. Lol
@@jackkraken3888 you saw what was $10 a month?
Nice!
Nice! 👌
Tripod & the manfrotto head details 🤔
I think I would come back on a Sunday morning and take the photo
It's a church in the middle of the picture. Sunday morning...
4:15 how do you know where your “sweet spot” is?
hey, noob question here. my camera has a lowest native iso of 100 but it can go down to 50. so does it negatively impact the image quality if i shoot with 50 iso?
Ideally you would shoot at your camera's lowest ISO for the absolute cleanest image quality. However, in this case, gaining longer shutter speeds was more important to me than using the extended low ISO so I went to Low1 (iso 32). With most modern cameras, I wouldn't think twice shooting between ISO 32 - ISO 400. They are all going to be ridiculously clean and no one will notice when printed or posted small to the web.
Filter is $230 for 77mm on Amazonian web site... Not a bad price.
It's not for me. I think the shot was more interesting with the traffic. So, for me, I'm finding that I do not need a nd filter for my type of photography.
You can also do that same effect without a ND filter
How to do this with video like walking dead.
would love to see a review of the d750
D850 right ?
the d750 really
Have you searched their videos from a few years back when D750 came out...?
Was too lazy Tbh XD
I thought you were going to combine another picture on top to remove the blur from the cars...
Nope, that's the point of the neutral density filter. If you want to remove the cars by layering a bunch of photos, you can do that too but you will have to spend a bunch of time in photoshop and you won't get the same effect in the clouds.
Fstoppers No, i mean after you captured that picture with 16 minutes exposure