[Jim F]

My second time playing with the new filter. Yesterday I was trying various things and settings and my photos came out soft. One thing I noticed is with the filter on the camera seems to have a difficult time with auto focusing. Today I tried to focus on better technique and patience. Comments would be appreciated as were those on the first post. I have placed 5 photos trying to show the results of different 'kinds of shots' and the results in sharpness they produced, but fresh eyes would help in determining if the results are better. Thanks in advance.

   

   

   

   

   

[kNox]

I can already see improvement. The second photo is great! I think by your third outing with this filter you're going to master it

[Colly]

The first photo shows some subject movement; then again that is the main purpose of these filters,- to allow longer exposure times, not really for the shots you have taken, good as some of them are! they are usually used for blurring moving water and clouds drifting across the sky.

[Don Schaeffer]

I don't know about the filter, but that first photo really appeals to me. I have never seen a woodpecker that close. I have never seen a woodpecker's tongue. There is a little blurring but so what.

[Jim F]

The first photo shows some subject movement; then again that is the main purpose of these filters,- to allow longer exposure times, not really for the shots you have taken, good as some of them are! they are usually used for blurring moving water and clouds drifting across the sky.

Thanks for the comments Colly they are appreciated. In playing with the new filter I was aware of the 'mainstream' usages of the ND filter. But as happy as I am with my Canon SX50HS, it does have some limitations due to its makeup. One of the issues is that the highest aperture value is a nominal f8 which on very bright sunny days ,( add some water and snow), still allows too much light in for some specific shots. Hence the experiment of the day was using the filter as 'a pair of sunglasses', and seeing what quality of photo came out after dropping the available light to the camera. On the whole it worked very well, but some minor tweaking still needs to be worked out.