WildernessTracker wrote in post #17881211
I took the opportunity to head back up to Bow Fiddle Rock on the Moray coast yesterday to see if I could get the sunrise.
I have realised that using a screw in 10 stop filter along with the lee grads is starting to become annoying especially if you want to recompose and focus. This then results in taking everything off the front of the lens, doing what I need to do and then putting it all back on. Really tempted by the Big Stopper and Little Stopper
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Awesome capture!
By the way, I know you're pain, I stacked filters for a long time (big stopper, grads, etc). I recently sold all my plate filters and went back to circulars mostly because of lens hood issues (Florida...) and I don't use grads anymore.
One thing I've learned to employ is just to learn your lens's focus points. Unfortunately today's lenses, while they have distance markers, are totally not useful as they're not at all accurate. Some are. But most are not. That said, you can figure your own out! Take your 10-18, and focus on an object 4 feet away. See where the distance market is on your lens. You now know where to manually set it, for that relative distance. Do the same thing for 6 feet, or so. I'll explain those values with the DOF calculations. You now have two very simple and effect distance markers that you can always use without ever trying to focus. Instead, you let depth of field do it for you. Do this for a few of the common focal lengths that you use the most. It doesn't have to be exact, it just has to be relatively close. Depth of field will do the work for you.
At 10mm, F11, if you focus on something at 2 feet, it will have enough depth of field to have horizon in focus to infinity.
At 10mm, F11, if you focus on something at 4 feet, it will have everything near 1 foot to infinity in focus thanks to depth of field. 1 foot to infinity!
At 12mm, F11, 4 feet gives you 1.5ft to infinity.
At 14mm, F11, 4 feet gives you 1.7ft to infinity.
At 16mm, F11, 4 feet gives you 2ft to infinity.
At 18mm, F11, 4 feet gives you 2.2ft to 20 feet. So you actually need to focus out a little more. At 6 feet, you get 2.7 feet to infinity.
So, on your 10-18, if you just focus at 6 feet in front of you (again, do this one time at your focal lengths to see what the marking is so you know where it is in reality, there will be different markings of course at the different focal lengths, but you only need it to be close, so you could just make an average, this is the beauty of working with ultrawide angles), you know that if you set it to that point in the future, and stop down to F11, you will always have enough depth of field to get anything from 1 foot to 2.7 feet in front of you out to infinity, in focus. No more worrying with filters.
You can do this to your popular lenses and always know where to set them, just like old school lenses with precise markings. Really helpful for fast use of filters in the dark and in rapidly changing light so you don't miss the moment.
You can compose with Live View through the filters, so then you're set.
Very best,
