Lee filters test shoot and product review – Day 2

Sunday (the second round), I got to the Rock pools at Cronulla 10 minutes before sunrise and claimed my spot, this time only 2 other photographers were there.

The environmental conditions were much better today than yesterday, however there was a long stretch of cloud off to the horizon that covered and delayed the sunrise shot by around 10 minutes. I wasn’t using a chart or app to calculate exposure times with the Big Stopper so this gave me plenty of time to compose the shot and get a feel for how long to expose each shot for.  To get a properly exposed pre-dawn shot using the Big Stopper, I exposed for 160 seconds, using f/11 and ISO 100.

Unedited – Sunrise delayed by cloud cover in the horizon.
160 sec exposure on F/11 ISO 100
Taken with the Big Stopper

When the sun was half way up the clouds, the exposure was dropped to 61 seconds (using the same setting as above image), and once the sun was just above the clouds, I exposed for 39 seconds, using the Big Stopper and the 0.9 (3 stops) soft gradient neutral density filters to reduce the glare and brightness of the sun.

I felt more comfortable now with the Lee filters, knowing beforehand which ones I wanted to use helped me focus more on composition.

Next time I will implement the use of an exposure calculator so speed up my process of capturing these seascapes.

Sun salutation at the Rock pool
39 sec exposure on F/11 ISO 100
Taken with Big Stopper and 0.9 (3 stops) Grad ND filter