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well I have not entirely joined this very exclusive club or removing light from perfectly good scenes, however I may be tempted to get one of these after this morning, something different and a fun effect to work with - the B+W bigstopper has great saturation and colour and appears have none or very little colour cast.

Nice idea with the first. I didn't think of using it for that scene in particular.

#2 nice tones on the sea!

Have you put in your order yet??

Very nice work there Gerry....good to see the big stopper put to good use

OK - here's my crap efforts of waving my bigstopper at things...


NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 53 sec at f / 11, ISO 100 + 3.0 ND


NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 54 sec at f / 11, ISO 100 + 3.0 ND

be brutal

On another note we really should do a big stopper event where we go out and try and specifically aim to compose and shoot for this.

Rodney, Just cause you have a big stopper doesn't mean that composition goes out the window. I know that you were just pointing and shooting semi-randomly!!

Bloody hell Gerry. That first shot is one of the finest sunrise landscapes I've seen from pretty much anyone here.

Can you please elaborate more on the bigstopper and what you did in this image. My recollection it's a very high value ND, but I'm interested in technique for that shot as well. The light looks like a normal exposure, but the silkiness of the water tells another story. Sublime result.

Remorhaz wrote:OK - here's my crap efforts of waving my bigstopper at things...
be brutal

The first image feels disjointed due to the break in the leading line from the foreground rock up into cliff face rock, a slightly wider angle of view would have made the difference here - the wispness to the water is almost not quite enough and is questionable whether a bigstopper helped or hindered the composition in this one.

The second image initially looks 2nd rate after lookign at your first one, however I think it could work better without being cropped? that line leading to blowhole is strong and anchors the image nicely, however once the eyes get there they run outta pixels...

Remorhaz wrote:On another note we really should do a big stopper event where we go out and try and specifically aim to compose and shoot for this.

yes, this filter requires practice, like any effect I reckon it can be quite difficult to match it to a composition, so a session like this might well help fine tune the brain to look for scenes that are complimented by the effect.

stubbsy wrote:Bloody hell Gerry. That first shot is one of the finest sunrise landscapes I've seen from pretty much anyone here.

Can you please elaborate more on the bigstopper and what you did in this image. My recollection it's a very high value ND, but I'm interested in technique for that shot as well. The light looks like a normal exposure, but the silkiness of the water tells another story. Sublime result.

I am not a big fan of the picture to be honest, however it is growing on me, that will fade by the end of the weekend though. If someone else took it i would be like 'wow aesome shot'! however I am always more critical of my own shots

This bigstopper is Surens one (B+W 77mm ND 3.0 'BigStopper'), basically its a pure ND which when on the lens basically renders the viewfinder black, although you can make out skylines and stuff on very bright days like saturday morning. I basically lined up the horizon on these - I am pretty familiar with the 11-16 now so I know what the composition is gonna look like without having to chimp too much.

As mentioned the filter gives very nice colour saturation and it appears to have worked well with this composition and with the strong light coming from the RHS. this was f11 at 30secs from memory.