DB685
City Skyline
So, for my birthday this year my lovely wife bought me a Fujifilm X-T2 (I know, I’m a lucky boy and probably don’t deserve it). And like a child at Christmas I ripped the box open, popped in a charged battery, and headed out to take some photos as soon as I could. I also recently bought a Lee Filters Super Stopper, as I wanted to explore long exposure photography some more. I’ve dabbled with this in the past, and am a long-time follower of Vulture Labs for some inspiration (www.vulturelabs.photography - his work is just awesome!).
I have to fit my photography in with trying to be a hands-on father to my 2 young sons, and an office job that often requires long hours. So I tend to shoot on my way in to work (if I’m lucky with the commute), or in the middle of the day (if I can grab half an hour away from my desk). That’s why I tend to shoot in B&W, because the high contrast lighting you get when the sun is high in the sky tends to wash out the colours, and lends itself to more simple compositions in monochrome. Plus, you can get some really good shots even when the weather is overcast and the light is a bit flat (as it often is in London).
I have the Big Stopper, but found that it wasn’t blocking out enough light to lengthen the shutter speed sufficiently to achieve the effects I wanted when shooting in bright conditions in the middle of the day. This is my first attempt with the Super Stopper, and it’s getting closer to the effect I want. With this shot, to achieve the correct exposure at f9 without the filter would have required a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second (at ISO200). With the Super Stopper on that goes up to 1 minute (Lee Filters have a free app that calculates the correct shutter speed for you). Ideally I would have liked a longer exposure, to draw out even more movement in the clouds, and to flatten the river water a touch more. But by stopping down to anything smaller than f11 I’ve found that the image quality starts to degrade if you’re using a crop sensor camera.
City Skyline
So, for my birthday this year my lovely wife bought me a Fujifilm X-T2 (I know, I’m a lucky boy and probably don’t deserve it). And like a child at Christmas I ripped the box open, popped in a charged battery, and headed out to take some photos as soon as I could. I also recently bought a Lee Filters Super Stopper, as I wanted to explore long exposure photography some more. I’ve dabbled with this in the past, and am a long-time follower of Vulture Labs for some inspiration (www.vulturelabs.photography - his work is just awesome!).
I have to fit my photography in with trying to be a hands-on father to my 2 young sons, and an office job that often requires long hours. So I tend to shoot on my way in to work (if I’m lucky with the commute), or in the middle of the day (if I can grab half an hour away from my desk). That’s why I tend to shoot in B&W, because the high contrast lighting you get when the sun is high in the sky tends to wash out the colours, and lends itself to more simple compositions in monochrome. Plus, you can get some really good shots even when the weather is overcast and the light is a bit flat (as it often is in London).
I have the Big Stopper, but found that it wasn’t blocking out enough light to lengthen the shutter speed sufficiently to achieve the effects I wanted when shooting in bright conditions in the middle of the day. This is my first attempt with the Super Stopper, and it’s getting closer to the effect I want. With this shot, to achieve the correct exposure at f9 without the filter would have required a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second (at ISO200). With the Super Stopper on that goes up to 1 minute (Lee Filters have a free app that calculates the correct shutter speed for you). Ideally I would have liked a longer exposure, to draw out even more movement in the clouds, and to flatten the river water a touch more. But by stopping down to anything smaller than f11 I’ve found that the image quality starts to degrade if you’re using a crop sensor camera.