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Here is an incoming wave blur, on the Atlantic Ocean, captured shortly after sunrise on Cayo Santa Maria in Cuba. I used a 3-stop ND filter to slow things down. I shot about 60-70 incoming wave blurs at this spot and this is the only wave that blurred like this. I thought it was kinda cool.
Nikon D200
12-24mm @ 18mm (effective 27mm)
ISO 100
f22 @ 0.5 seconds
3-stop ND filter
Look forward to comments.
Attachment 89373
Beautiful blur, comp and subject, Andrew! You can almost smell the salt air. :S3: Thanks for sharing the technique. I really like this mixture of solid and motion. Wonderful ocean color.
Hi Andrew, I really like the blur and the colors of the sky and water. You can't go wrong with little puffy clouds either... I'm not so sure about the crop for my eye though, just playing with the scroll bar on my browser I think I like some cropping from the bottom to make it a pano, but that's just me. Good job with the ND filter, that's my choice for water blurs too. :c3:
Andrew, I love this one from your trip. All of the images on your blog were fantastic but this one really stood out as special. I love the bottom sand area and the round swoop of water. I think cropping out the sky is a way to make two completely different images from one. Really nice work !! One of my fav's.
Andrew. I like the blurs and the colors, but I think that wide angle shots, and this one included, work best when the subject,which I would consider the rock here, was placed prominently in the foreground, which means you would be within inches of it while shooting. What this does is emphasize the depth of the image to the greatest degree possible, which IMO is the strength of wide angle images. Also, I would have used the 12mm, but thats just me!
The biggest problem, as I'm sure you realized this, is reducing light reaching the sensor to allow a slow shutter-speed. You have two choices; decrease the aperture (which you did) and use of a ND filter (which you did). The first choice has problems. Stopping down to F22, which is overkill since DOF from a foreground subject to infinity with wide angle lenses reguires surprisingly little stopping down, isn't such a good idea because it will cause image degradation due to internal lens refraction. I see why you did it, and if all you had was a 3 stop ND filter there was no other choice. I'm just pointing out that stopping down too much can cause problems, and your first line of defense ideally would be the ND filters.
I would guess what was called for was a 6-8 stop(or more) ND filter. Being cheap as I am I just wait for it to be overcast, real cloudy, or near sunset or sunrise for these type shots, but if I had a bunch or extra money, which I don't, a Vari-ND sure sounds like alot of fun! regards~Bill
That is very cool, Andrew. The water, waves, and clouds have a painterly look with this blur. I think both Kerry & Bill make some good suggestions about cropping & FG subject placement. Nice job getting good exposure using ND filter.
Andrew, I love the rich velvety water - that is an effect that I really want to learn to do. the colors are incredible - I kind of like Kerry's crop idea, and while the clouds are gorgeous and I wouldn't want to lose them, i kind of like cropping down to the water too - you have a lot of different image possibilities out of this shot - wonderful!
Thanks for the comments and crop suggestions, very much appreciated folks!:S3:
