Long Exposure Daytime Photos With a 10 Stop ND Filter

    Recently I purchased a 10 stop ND filter, a B+W F-Pro from B&H. I've tried some long exposures of water at dusk in the past without a ND filter that were fun, but difficult in the rapidly diminishing light. I knew I needed a ND filter to play around with this in the day time, to show blur of clouds, trees, water, or even make a busy place look void of people.

    I have some ideas of what I want to photography around here other than a typical waterfall, but most of them are involving the clouds recently. The clouds are proving to be quite dramatic in the afternoon with the recent daily thunderstorms that we have been getting.

    I plan to keep playing with the filter and share some of the work as I go and continue to make improvements. I am finding depending on the speed and the focal length of the lens I want to get a shutter speed at least above 10 seconds. Wider angle lenses i.e.. < 24mm, you will want a longer shutter speed than you would need for a telephoto.

   My only complaint so far with the filter is that it shows some purple color tinting due to the glass, this could be dependent on what angle from the sun I am photographing that causes the filter to do this. So far some adjustments in white balance have helped to correct this. 

    The first photo below I used the ND filter along with my B+W 77mm Circular Polarizer MRC stacked on first to be able to see which way the polarizer needed to be turned.

Long Exposure from the top of Whiskey Hill by Elba, MN (ISO 200, f/13, 15/1 shutter)

Plumber Building- Mayo Clinic (ISO 500, f/11, 5/1 shutter)