Lee big stopper

bertie1967

bertie1967

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Been up London recently been using the big stopper and most of the pictures seem darker than normal... Any ideas going down to Brighton soon want to get some seascapes but don't want to darker images.....can't work it out I'm sure you clever people can give me a clue what I'm doing wrong??????
 
To be honest with out seeing the photos it's hard to be totally accurate so maybe you could put up a couple of unedited examples but my gut instinct would be that you've under exposed the scene, such a dark filter does take a little getting used to, personally I used a B&W ND110 but have found that well a basic calculation will for example give a 2 minute exposure reality is sometimes much longer to maybe 3 minutes so it will take you time to get used to your filter :)

This thread has a rough exposure guide for using a 10 stop filter :thumbs:

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=216174
 
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It's not an exact science, I've found that I normally have to add time on to the '10 stops' quoted to achieve a well exposed image

Trial and error until you get a feel for it
 
Yep, agree with all the above. Not sure how consistent Lee's are (I guess better than most) but 10 stops doesn't always mean exactly 10 stops. Assuming you have got your exposure calculations right then it sounds like your's maybe a little more than 10. You can experiment very easily with any scene at all by just shooting with and without the filter and adding x number of stops each time. Once the histograms roughly match you'll know how many stops of light your filter blocks and will never have the issue again.
 
As above - When I bought mine I played around and got the multiple to be 1530 on my big stopper (1024 is ten stops) but in the field, especially during sun sets I find that if I go for 11 stops (2048) then it may be a little over exposed but nothing I can't bring back in PP and you don't get the downsides of under exposing.
 
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