Remember I said about issues with vignetting in a recent blog post? It turns out that the vignetting is a known issue with variable filters and the advice I had was to get a 10-stop filter (rather than a variable filter).

So, one cheeky purchase from Amazon later and I was back off to Blenheim to try it out!

One of the things I’ve been mindful of recently when thinking about my photography is how I need to slow down a bit. When I go out to take photos I often end up in Run & Gun mode. I walk and shoot what I see, often switching back & forth between lenses as I go. I may get some good shots but it feels erratic and this year I want to slow down and be more focussed with my photography - anyone else feel the same?

Perfect Conditions

When I arrived at Blenheim the conditions were looking fantastic. The palace looked incredible just walking up to the entrance with dark moody clouds being occasionally broken by some lovely winter sunlight. Almost immediately I returned to run & gun mode as I headed over the Grand Bridge and began my journey around the park.

The light was excellent. F5.6 · 1/2000 · ISO 1000 · 22mm.

Sometimes you feel in the right place at the right time. F5.6 · 1/60 · ISO 100 · 18mm

After doing a loop of the park (which must be a good few miles) and taking plenty of photos I returned to the Grand Bridge for sunset. There is a great spot by the lake which gives a view back toward the Bridge and Palace so I used that composition to practice my long exposures.

I was pleased to find that a 10-stop filter is quite forgiving and achieved pleasing results at both 30 & 60-second exposures.

When I’d purchased the filter I realised I needed a new shutter remote as well because the two remotes I already own don’t fit my D500! I used this shutter to capture the 60-second exposures.

If you’re thinking of trying long exposure photography you may want to invest in a shutter remote so you can put your camera into bulb mode and create exposures which are greater than 30 seconds (the usual upper limit for shutter speed). This will also come in handy for night photography :-)

Long Exposure test. F7.1 · 50 seconds · ISO 100 · 18mm.

The image above is a 50-second composition using the same composition as a shot I shared in my previous Blenheim blog but this time with smoothing of the water and sky. I’ve added a Linear Gradient in LightRoom to add a bit of colour to the sky. I also took a single exposure so could paint the sky back in with photoshop but for now, I quite enjoy this image.

Long exposure is a string I wanted to add to my photography bow as I think it really enhances some images but I’m also aware that there are a LOT of long exposure images about so you wonder, does the world need more long exposure images?

When it comes to images such as seascapes I really like them and I think it adds something extra which can differentiate a DSLR photo from that taken on a mobile phone.

The 5 or so long exposure images I took all seemed to work quite well. I didn’t have any focus issues like I had when testing the variable filter, but this might be because I was more careful when attaching the filter!

All in all, it was a fruitful afternoon of photography with a mixture of long exposure, landscape, woodland and nature photography! I’ll leave you with some of my other favourite images from the day.

Thanks for reading!

Simon.