[matthew]

Consider this a world exclusive: there's probably nobody else who's odd enough to combine the ultra-wide photography that the Olympus 7-14 allows with long exposures in daylight. There's one very good reason why I suspect nobody's ever done it: the 7-14 has a bulbous front element and isn't threaded for filters. More on that later.



The photo of Toronto's City Hall is a full-width crop of the original frame. Taken at f/8 in broad daylight, I had to use iso200 to keep the exposure at a manageable sixty seconds.



The monument for the Boer War was photographed at the same ISO200 and f/8, but stronger sunlight called for a short thirty-second exposure.



My personal favourite, this shot was at iso200, f/5.6, and sixty seconds. I like the 'detail' of the tree blurring in the corner, and any photo with a legible street sign is a good photo for me. This and the memorial have both had some of the extreme perspective distortions removed in photoshop.

The 4/3 forum that I'm on has a monthly contest, and the theme this fortnight is "Long Exposure". Having won the last competition, I have a little more freedom to play and experiment. That got me thinking about an article I read in Outdoor Photographer about daylight photos with extremely dark neutral density filters. Coupling that with the unfilterable ultrawide was too good to miss.

To take these photos I had to build a DIY filter. A 20"x24" sheet of 3-stop ND gel was cut down to six 8x10 rectangles, which went into a photo frame that's made to suspend a print between two sheets of glass. A total of $16 in material gives a serviceable 18-stop ND filter that's large enough to hold in front of the lens. Its weakness is that it reflects everything so there must be a completely light-tight seal between the camera and filter. It's killer flare: the smallest light leak will wipe out the contrast and burn out a portion of the image. A heavy black towel and then a second larger black cloth attached with a staple-gun provided a seal on the front, and clips and generous wrapping sealed the open end around the camera and tripod head. With the time to set up each shot, and two minutes to take the exposure and subtraction-frame, this is a very slow process. Even then less than half of my photos were leak-free.

The image quality is about what you'd expect when shooting through two cheap panes of glass and six layers of filters that aren't really meant to be in front of a lens. For a minute. It's not stellar. But beyond the sharpness loss I was surprised by the colour, which is completely stripped out and replaced by a warm red. These both look like problems that don't exist for commercial filters, although B+W does mention that its 10-stop filter has a warmer cast than its 6-stop filter.

So, why bother?

Part of the appeal is testing out a particular something that, as far as I know, has never been done before. (I'm probably not even close to the first...) While I was initially disappointed by the quality of my $16 rig, I've since come to enjoy their individuality and unique look. It feels like it takes out some of the digital in photography, and the daylight photos of empty streets reminds me of the early experiments in fixing images, which required much longer exposures than these. There's certainly more of this work in my future.

For practical purposes, ultra-dark ND filters do have several uses. The simplest would be for photographing extremely bright objects (the sun, welding processes...) safely. Another use, and one that I can see being more practical, is that any moving people or traffic will blur into nonexistence. I see a new purchase in my near future....

[Keith Alan]

Wow.
Glad to see someone running, not walking like me, in this direction (daylight long exposures).
Congrats on the contest win. Well-deserved of course.

I enjoyed reading about how you made things work and used the ultra-wide twist to separate yourself from the rest of the pack. That shows your commitment to remaining an individual who does things their own way.

[Zig]

Wot Keith said!
Absolutely fascinating. I'm full of admiration for those who are creative enough to "do it because it's there"; I totally applaud your sense of the intrepid, matthew: very refreshing and active. It's the quality and behaviour of the light that really enthralls me here too. Rivetting stuff!

[Wedding Shooter]

I like the first shot the best Matt - how about a picture of your setup

[Paul.R.Lindqvist]

#1 is simply amazing.

Great work!

/Paul L.

[matthew]

Thanks, everyone, I really appreciate the support. I have to confess that I bought a B=W 110ND filter this afternoon, which is a 10-stop reduction, for my 35-100. The quality is much better, and there's actual colour in the photos. The fast tele is probably the wrong choice for this filter, since the DOF is so short it's actually hard to tell that there's motion blur. (first sample below.) But the reason why I bought the 77mm filter is that I can step it down to fit my 11-22, which should be almost as interesting as the 7-14.

Here's a "miss" photo of the Boer war memorial as it came out of the camera:



The vignetting at the top is the filter's frame or the black fabric obscuring part of the lens. The spot at the bottom is a light leak. The colour is natural. WS, I'll definitely get a photo of the setup next time I have it set up. I really missed having a camera to get a few photos of the looks I was getting from the passers-by.

Here are a couple of shots with the commercial filter. These were taken in a little "park" next to a highway overpass just a few feet outside of the camera store.





Colour! There's actual colour! I'm pleased. But, the new filter doesn't have the personality of the home-made version. I'll be continuing to use the picture-frame filter as well whenever I can. (updated: exposure for the post and flower is f/8, iso100, and a speedy 6 seconds; the grass and trees is the same except it's a 60 second exposure.)

(And thanks for the endorsement of the photo of City Hall. I'm not going to have much time before I head off for Reno, so that's what I'm going to use for the contest on that other forum.)

[matthew]

I've done a new take on the photo of Toronto's city hall, replacing the monochrome with a little bit of colour in Photoshop.

[Irma]

These are beautiful pictures Matt, and thanks a lot for the explanation too. I bought long ago a hoya ND x8 and I haven't worked too much with it, since I had the idea that it was mainly to take pictures of waterfalls... Now I see that the possibilities are endless.... Love the idea!!

I have to try some pictures too...

BTW, my favorite is the last one because of the color...

[matthew]

Thanks, Irma. I'm looking forward to trying out the 110 (10-stop) if I can find some suitable subjects. I'm not quite sure what they are yet, so it'll be an adventure. I'm hopeful that it'll help if there are any people blocking the good views in some of the parks that I'll be passing soon.

And it's good to see you back.