Bournemouth Pier and the Ten Stopper...

Spent an hour trying out my brand new Nisi 10 stop ND filter just after sunrise this morning, in front of Bournemouth Pier.

The 77mm filter fitting my Nikkor 10-24mm was £47, about half the price of some of its competitors, so I was keen to see if was any good.

Being completely new to this, I first found that you can see bugger all through the viewfinder with it fitted! You can just make out the bright sun but that's it, so you have to compose the shot without it, then screw it on. Which, when the camera is propped up on a Gorilla Pod and implanted into wet sand, with the tide lapping in, is frankly, quite difficult!

My first shots were taken from a wall, before the sun broke through. The sky and clouds were great! But the sea was so far away that while the time exposure had smoothed out the waves, its significance was greatly diminished.

As I got braver and moved further toward the lapping waves, the sun got much brighter and the cloud largely burned away. But I was determined to do this properly and try the filter out properly - I don't get down to Bournemouth often and here was a good opportunity.

It all took its time - I like to use the Mirror-Up facility on the D7000 when it's on the Gorilla Pod to completely eliminate mirror vibration, so this adds 30 secs before the shot, then the actual shot, again, up to 30 secs and then the camera does its anti-noise 'stuff' for yet another up to 30 secs....all that's for one shot!!

Anyways - the proverbial colour cast that is a renowned side effect of such a heavy ND was not apparent, colours were OK but less saturated, though vignetting was much increased. And here, because the sun was so bright - and reflected from the water, it was always burned out - and irretrievable. Hence the mono conversion, which helped, though I have altered the blue spectrum a lot to increase the dark sky and contrast.

Try it LARGE

I wished that I had used my Sigma EX polariser as well. But, even though both filters are 'slim', with such an ultrawideangle, two filters stacked would undoubtedly lead to significant vignetting.

So, handholding, I tried this out. I pointed the lens into the sky - and saw nothing - might as well have had the lens cap on! The polariser reduces by 2 stops, so overall, a 12 stop ND! To get an exposure that was bright enough to view on screen, I had to up the ISO to 5,000 with an exposure of 1/8 sec f3.5!! But, it did show that at 10mm with both filters, a little vignetting in the extreme corners but at 11mm that had gone - useful to know - and anybody with this lens wanting to know what happens when you try such crazy stuff, now knows!

So, this is probably not the best shot attainable with this set-up but I'm fairly OK with it as a first effort with a 10 stop ND.

It was with some surprise that my giant fungi blip of yesterday managed to get itself to the very top spot in the Spotlights - a big thanks to all for helping it get there! It is truly appreciated.