Test shots with my 10 Stop ND filter

[donoreo]

I did not both going back to the old thread. For those that did not read it, here is the back story. I purchased a 10 Stop ND filter from Hi-Tech/Formatt back in March. It turned out that mine had optical flaws in it that would show up in photos. In the meantime, they brought out a new, higher quality ND filter. They had problems with light leakage causing reflections on the old filters so tried to solve the problem with a foam gasket. This filter still caused a colour cast that would vary from filter to filter.

I was offered a discount on the new filter as a replacement for my original one (Dan123 is using the same one as my old one, but his was not flawed like mine) and I took it. This weekend I finally had a chance to try it out.

I admit that I did have a chance two weeks ago but I seem to forget at that time that a 10 stop filter means to adjust by 10 stops....I do not know what I was thinking either Everything was underexposed.

What I found is that with my camera (Canon 450D) on auto WB, it will vary the colour temperature quite a bit under the same settings. You can see it in the two photos below that there is a noticeable difference. I only played with these a little bit in Lightroom



It was mostly cloudy when I took these and I was in a deep valley, getting eaten by mosquitoes.



On both of these I did find that that the colour cast was toward the blues, and I moved it toward red to more closely match my test shots taken without the filter.

My goal here was to test the filter. I was limited on content as the rivers are all really high at the moment so where there would be some small waterfalls, there is not.

Do feel free to critic the photos anyway

[silversnapper1]

Nicely done donoreo. Must admit that I had never thought of using AWB, I always set my white balance for the prevailing conditions and adjust for the colour cast in ACR with the White Balance Tool.

My favourite of the two is the second one as there still seems to be a greenish cast in the first one.

Haven't had much chance to get out with my 10 stop lately.

[donoreo]

I have never set my WB, since I shoot RAW I have never bothered. I am pleased with the filter, I am not pleased with the composition of either of these photos, as I said, too much water! I did not get much time to work on either of these. The top was a rush yesterday afternoon and the bottom was done at 6:30 this morning.

[MattUK]

I was going to post my test shots, but to be honest, they're pretty crap. It was a very windy and dull day, and I couldn't capture the movement of the sea on the beach I was at properly. I am getting quite a heavy blue cast to my shots though, but it doesn't seem too hard to correct (though it's difficult to tell on such a dull day!). I too was rushed, and I've learned that you need quite a bit of time to set-up, and setting up in a lot of wind is tricky!

[wavemachine]

It is great to read this thread, I have just ordered one of these and after seeing Donereos great shots I am really looking forward to it.

I will post some shots up once I have got mine, if they are any good of course

[donoreo]

I am find with the colour cast, it is easy enough to fix (if I spend more than 5 minutes at 6:30 in the morning working on it). The price on the Formatt 10 stop is great and, most importantly, they have stock They have provided excellent customer service, including investigating different shipping options when it looked like a postal strike was going to happen here (they ship overseas via regular mail, not sure about local. Oddly, their stuff gets here faster than a magazine I subscribe to....)

[dan123]

#Glad youve got a decent one donoreo, mines awfull as you now, lol, nice shots, yes matt it takes bloody ages! gotta be spot on, you wait so long for the exposure: 4 min exp means 4 min writing to the card for me too, 8 min! i dont want it wrong, take it slow and carefull. My Girlfiend has agreed to buy me a big stopper for my birhtday so shoud have that in a few months time, lol

Dan

[silversnapper1]

Originally Posted by dan123

#Glad youve got a decent one donoreo, mines awfull as you now, lol, nice shots, yes matt it takes bloody ages! gotta be spot on, you wait so long for the exposure: 4 min exp means 4 min writing to the card for me too, 8 min! i dont want it wrong, take it slow and carefull. My Girlfiend has agreed to buy me a big stopper for my birhtday so shoud have that in a few months time, lol

Dan

Hi Dan,

Do you not have a function on your camera to switch off Long Exposure Noise Reduction? This will dramatically reduce the write time.

[dan123]

Yeah i switch it on for long exposures, i have tried it withiout and the image quality is STupid, Seriously noisy images above 30 secs, so i put up wht the long write times, Even with the long exp reduction, i still have to apply pp noise reduction,

Im not bothered about rattling of lots of frames.... one good one will do me, Its worked and failed before for me, lol,
just takes a lot of patience
Dan