I always admired water shots taken with long exposure time. I tried to capture water, but the photo became overexposed, as it was not dark enough. Finally, I bought an ND8 filter. I wanted to try it as soon as possible, but I had to wait until the weekend.
I remembered a nice place, where I met waterfalls and cascades in every 10 minutes. I had not been there since my teen ages. Nevertheless, I hoped that my memories would not play the fool with me.
We arrived and I realized that my expectations were correct. The wood was wonderful and hidden streams ran in several places among the trees not far from the side path.
It was the first time I had used ND8 filter. I read that it was difficult to use, because the photographer could not see clearly through the dark filter. My bridge camera has an acceptable live mode, so I did not really meet this problem.
I took some shots of blurred streams and I like them. I realized that long exposure time made colors deeper in the capture. Of course, I used my good old tripod. The LCD screen on my camera contains few pixels (260.000 ?). In the wood, I did not think of the size of the LCD screen. I was just happy looking at the awesome colors.
Well, the colors were wonderful and the waterfalls were blurred nicely. I wanted more. I wanted a white silken stream instead of the water. I took out the CPL filter from my bag and put it before the ND8. Such way, I gained more exposure time. I enjoyed taking shots very much.
I was excited while I was downloading pictures from the camera to my notebook. When the download process finished I opened the images in the picture browser. I realized only at home that most of my shots were overexposed. Well, not the whole photo was overexposed, just its parts, where the sky could be seen via the trees. The sky was white. Tones were lost beyond recovery.
I selected some shots that could be rescued. It was not an easy lesson for me. I knew I would never forget to check if there is overexposed part on the capture.
Next time, when I was in other forest and used long exposure time, I took shots and checked every shot carefully on the LCD display. I think the photos became better, at least from technical point of view.
