I really do like long exposure photography, BUT…
Long exposure photographs can be really fascinating – clouds… movement of people… and especially turning waves into a mystical fog.
And maybe it is just me, but I find it quite a hassle to get to a pleasing result. When taking the photo, I of course try everything to avoid light leaks. Eyepiece covered? – check. Avoiding light leaks in between the filters in front of the lens? – more challenging…
I use the Formatt Hitech 100mm filter system, the older version of the filter holder (not the neat and quite expensive new version) configured with two filter slots (that I need for ND filter plus ND grad) plus a 105mm circular polarizer. I have tweaked the whole thing to ensure that I do not get any vignetting at 12mm (DX format). So light can come in between any of these. I use a black headband/scarf to cover it all and it requires a bit of fiddling to ensure it covers everything but does not cause vignetting. I even put a gasket on my 16 stop firecrest filter to have less of a gap between it and the ND grad…
…And still I get light leaks in the form of spots, sometimes with a slight colour cast, caused by the tiniest of dust particles (and yes, I do take care to clean lens and filters).
The setup is of course easier to seal if I do not use an ND grad, but I still tend to get the odd little spec.
Up to maybe 45 seconds it is usually not too bad. The two examples here are 132s and 206s, respectively. Both of these have a few light leak spots, each also with a colour cast. Which means more effort to edit these in post processing.
I found that applying a noise reduction filter first gives better results when cloning/ stamping to remove these (usually they are far to large to get away with the Spot Healing Brush Tool). I am quite happy with the results of my post processing efforts – but still it is quite a hassle from start to finish.
If anyone has any useful suggestions – be it related to the filter setup and avoiding light leaks, or to the post processing workflow – please let me know !!
Mindful Snaps Photography 