Long exposure shots with the NEX, ND filters, faders, grads and......welding glass ?????

[markoneswift]

I thought I would share with you guys a couple of shots taken with my answer to a 'big stopper' type filter - a piece of welding glass I bought it for £2 off Ebay and glued it to an old 52mm filter ring, then threaded it onto my lens. I find around 20 to 30 seconds exposure time is about right, but my NEX has a hard time trying to cpmpensate for the green colour cast even with a custom WB. Here's a couple of samples :-

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River Aire @ Castleford - welding glass filter by markoneswift, on Flickr

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The Wreck in the Aire @ Castleford - welding glass filter by markoneswift, on Flickr

 

[Dioptrick]

Great idea!

I've never seen water motion-blur taken at midday... very resourceful and creative, markoneswift!!

That green cast is there because the nearly black welding glass is in fact green to block certain light frequencies to protect the welders eyes. You can probably make it more neutral without any post editing if you can find a 52mm 'purple' lens filter and glue the welding glass to that. If that doesn't work, the green cast can be easily corrected by software.

Well done!

 

[markoneswift]

Great idea!

I've never seen water motion-blur taken at midday... very resourceful and creative, markoneswift!!

That green cast is there because the nearly black welding glass is in fact green to block certain light frequencies to protect the welders eyes. You can probably make it more neutral without any post editing if you can find a 52mm 'purple' lens filter and glue the welding glass to that. If that doesn't work, the green cast can be easily corrected by software.

Well done!

Thanks, it was quite an interesting experiment. Normally people use 10 stop ND filters for stuff like this, but at £70+ for even a 'cheap' one, I figured I would give the welding glass a try. The colour cast can't be easily removed in PP sadly - I shot these in RAW with custom WB and even Photoshop CS5 with the latest Camera RAW could not fully restore the colour. Still, it's failrly close and I kind of like the cool temperature retro look. Thanks for the tip about the purple filter - might try that out

 

[Bimjo]

Actually the color cast works pretty well here. If the bridge was any color but white maybe not so much, but here it's ok.

 

[Dioptrick]

Thanks, it was quite an interesting experiment. Normally people use 10 stop ND filters for stuff like this, but at £70+ for even a 'cheap' one, I figured I would give the welding glass a try. The colour cast can't be easily removed in PP sadly - I shot these in RAW with custom WB and even Photoshop CS5 with the latest Camera RAW could not fully restore the colour. Still, it's failrly close and I kind of like the cool temperature retro look. Thanks for the tip about the purple filter - might try that out

Yes, the retro look is rather nice especially the water areas.

Not sure what countermeasures you tried in Photoshop, but out of curiosity I thought I'd try "variations" to see what would come out (I hope you don't mind). I did fiddle around with it a little bit more after the variation correction, but the initial outcome was pretty close to this. If you want to know more about variations just let me know...

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[markoneswift]

Yes, the retro look is rather nice especially the water areas.

Not sure what countermeasures you tried in Photoshop, but out of curiosity I thought I'd try "variations" to see what would come out (I hope you don't mind). I did fiddle around with it a little bit more after the variation correction, but the initial outcome was pretty close to this. If you want to know more about variations just let me know...

Thanks that's pretty nice, you've done a nice job and no I don't mind at all. Maybe you could IM me the things you did to correct this ? I really don't do much PP, just tried adjusting temperature etc in Camera RAW. Thanks again

 

[garethwi]

I like the green cast. It's like the Matrix.

 

[Dioptrick]

Thanks that's pretty nice, you've done a nice job and no I don't mind at all. Maybe you could IM me the things you did to correct this ? I really don't do much PP, just tried adjusting temperature etc in Camera RAW. Thanks again

OK, here you go...

Click the 'Image' drop down menu > click Adjustments > click Variations (at the very bottom of the Adjustments sub-menu)... which will open up this window palette.

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At the lower left you'll have a cluster of 7 variations of your original photo. This 'variation cluster' represents the opposing hues of a colour wheel. Click any one of these variations in that cluster and you'll see everything reshuffle. The photo at the centre of the cluster "current pick" starts off as your original, but in this screen capture I already clicked 'More Red' once. You will notice the two side-by-side pics on the top left shows the result of what I have done. Keep clicking more variations in the cluster and see what happens to the side-by-side pics. If you've gone too far or you can't find your way back to a better rendition, just click 'Original' and the cluster will revert back to the very beginning and you can start again. Over to your right are 3 picks for lighter or darker variations. Click those and see what happens.

On the upper right you'll notice a 'Fine - Coarse' slider. Slide to the left to make the degree of any available variation lesser, slide to the right to make the change stronger. 99% of the time most of the changes you need to make will be on 'Midtones' (shown as selected) but on tricky corrections, variations can be made specifically ONLY on hues that fall under the Shadow or Highlight categories. You can also adjust Saturation here in the 'variation style' if you want to (but I prefer adjusting saturation elsewhere).

Make sure the box 'Show Clipping' is ticked. The moment your 'Current Pick' displays a bright colour (like our NEX focus peaking) go back a step. That spells trouble because colours in that area will start to posterize and won't look natural.

 

[Dioptrick]

I like the green cast. It's like the Matrix.

You can go the opposite with Variations and give normal photos a green cast.

"Why or why didn't I take the blue pill!"

 

[Bimjo]

You can go the opposite with Variations and give normal photos a green cast.

"Why or why didn't I take the blue pill!"

I thought I was losing my mind until I figured out that in CS5 this only works in 32 bit mode on my MBPro. So I'm really not crazy. No, really, I'm not.

 

[davect01]

Very nice freeze frame.

 

[Dioptrick]

I thought I was losing my mind until I figured out that in CS5 this only works in 32 bit mode on my MBPro. So I'm really not crazy. No, really, I'm not.

I never thought to check. Mine seems to work even on 8 bit (on a desktop iMac) so that's good to know. Variations also works better in RGB mode because it seems to be less effective if the pic is already in CMYK.