August 26, 2014 at 12:25We shoot on Lumia with ND filters
Probably everyone who at least occasionally uses “Instagram” or simply edits photos on a smartphone, used the ability to impose filters on an already prepared picture. And this is hardly anyone can be surprised now.
But what if the spirit of the old school lives in you and you miss the old vanilla filters that used to be screwed to the old father’s Zenith? You might want to try using them with your smartphone. But so far do not rush to get glue or adhesive tape - we have already managed to conduct tests and are in a hurry to share our recommendations with you.
Neutral density filters or ND filters reduce the amount of light entering the lens without changing the colors and shades in the picture. Reducing the amount of light penetrating the matrix (or film), they allow you to choose a combination of shutter speed and aperture, which under other shooting conditions would lead to the creation of an “overexposed” image. ND filters have numbers corresponding to the “step” of the aperture, for example, from f.1.4 to f.2 or from f.5.6 to f.8, etc. (in Russian literature, the exact definition is more accepted: the filter number means the fraction of transmitted light, that is, number 2 is half the light flux, one second).
Filters exist in a variety of formats: they can be made as a nozzle for the lens or designed to be placed in a special holder. They can be completely gray, with a soft or hard transition.
An ND filter can come in handy if you are trying to blur some part of the photo. Below is an example of how a daylight photo was taken with automatic settings.
Here, the Lumia 1020, like all automatic cameras, will choose the fastest shutter speed and thereby reduce the likelihood of camera shake. However, when shooting water, this “freezes” the movement. This effect is normal in itself, but what if you are trying to photograph something else?
Usually, if you want to create some blur in the photo, you slow down the shutter speed. But this only works partly and in certain lighting conditions. If there is too much light, increasing the shutter speed will not work. For example, if we set the ISO at the lowest
possible level and slow down the shutter speed to 1/80 second (which is still fast enough), then we get the following result: Almost immediately, you can understand that the picture is overexposed and does not fit at all.
But with the help of a number of filters we can increase the exposure time to half a second and still get an excellent result.
This picture was taken with three filters in front of the lens on elastic straps. A warm graduated hue is also the effect of applying a filter, and not the result of photo correction after shooting.
The wide range of control options for shooting on the Lumia 1020 make this kind of picture a fairly simple task. You only need a tripod and basic knowledge in photography: you need to understand how to properly set the ISO value and exposure time. For the latter, quite possibly, some experimentation will be needed. But there are applications like ND Converter that help you calculate the time. After manually adjusting the focus and making sure everything else is set, select the timer function to prevent the camera from accidentally shaking.
And even though this kind of shooting may not look the most aesthetically beautiful from the outside, shooting with ND filters can give you truly extraordinary mobile shots, or, at worst, take you out into the nature on a day off :)
But what if the spirit of the old school lives in you and you miss the old vanilla filters that used to be screwed to the old father’s Zenith? You might want to try using them with your smartphone. But so far do not rush to get glue or adhesive tape - we have already managed to conduct tests and are in a hurry to share our recommendations with you.
What are ND filters?
Neutral density filters or ND filters reduce the amount of light entering the lens without changing the colors and shades in the picture. Reducing the amount of light penetrating the matrix (or film), they allow you to choose a combination of shutter speed and aperture, which under other shooting conditions would lead to the creation of an “overexposed” image. ND filters have numbers corresponding to the “step” of the aperture, for example, from f.1.4 to f.2 or from f.5.6 to f.8, etc. (in Russian literature, the exact definition is more accepted: the filter number means the fraction of transmitted light, that is, number 2 is half the light flux, one second).
Filters exist in a variety of formats: they can be made as a nozzle for the lens or designed to be placed in a special holder. They can be completely gray, with a soft or hard transition.
What does all this mean in practice?
An ND filter can come in handy if you are trying to blur some part of the photo. Below is an example of how a daylight photo was taken with automatic settings.
Here, the Lumia 1020, like all automatic cameras, will choose the fastest shutter speed and thereby reduce the likelihood of camera shake. However, when shooting water, this “freezes” the movement. This effect is normal in itself, but what if you are trying to photograph something else?
Usually, if you want to create some blur in the photo, you slow down the shutter speed. But this only works partly and in certain lighting conditions. If there is too much light, increasing the shutter speed will not work. For example, if we set the ISO at the lowest
possible level and slow down the shutter speed to 1/80 second (which is still fast enough), then we get the following result: Almost immediately, you can understand that the picture is overexposed and does not fit at all.
But with the help of a number of filters we can increase the exposure time to half a second and still get an excellent result.
This picture was taken with three filters in front of the lens on elastic straps. A warm graduated hue is also the effect of applying a filter, and not the result of photo correction after shooting.
The wide range of control options for shooting on the Lumia 1020 make this kind of picture a fairly simple task. You only need a tripod and basic knowledge in photography: you need to understand how to properly set the ISO value and exposure time. For the latter, quite possibly, some experimentation will be needed. But there are applications like ND Converter that help you calculate the time. After manually adjusting the focus and making sure everything else is set, select the timer function to prevent the camera from accidentally shaking.
And even though this kind of shooting may not look the most aesthetically beautiful from the outside, shooting with ND filters can give you truly extraordinary mobile shots, or, at worst, take you out into the nature on a day off :)