Landscape photography with the Olympus OM-D E-M1: Part 3

We have had an incredible run of gorgeous, clear, sunny Saturday mornings here on the West Coast in the last month. After working all week, and with a busy weekend ahead, I'm finding it exciting and energizing to plan where I will be to take photos as the sun rises on another glorious Saturday morning. This week I headed in-land, to Lake Brunner, Moana.

Kahikatea Grove - Te Kinga. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. 1/10th @f6.3, ISO 200. 0.9 ND Soft Grad

First off I went to the settlement of Te Kinga - one of my favourite places to shoot. Sunrise was scheduled for 7.40am, and the above image was taken at about 7.30am - 10 minutes before sunrise. I've been having fun using filters (see last post), and had decided that I was going to make good use of them to extend the exposure and smooth out the water.

Kahikatea Grove Long Exposure. 8 seconds @ f6.3, ISO 200. Cheap plastic ND+16 (-4 stops) filter

I love the way the long exposure has flattened out the water and produced nicer reflections, but I hate the strong colour cast and the way that it's sucked all the definition and colour out of the trees themselves. Compare the colour in the first image with the second - taken with a cheap plastic ND filter, and you'll see what I mean. Damn! I guess that means I am going to have to spend some serious money to get a decent ND filter after all.

Winter Sunrise - Te Kinga. Olympus E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. 1/10th @f8, ISO 200. Polarizer & 0.9 Soft ND Grad

Having established that I couldn't use the ND filters, I decided to just stick with the Cokin 0.9 soft grad, in conjunction with a Cokin circular polarizer. The polarizer was cutting out 2 stops of light, giving me slightly slower shutter speeds anyway, so I just went with that combination. Cokin are also considered a 'cheaper' alternative to the likes of LEE and NiSi filters, although they do offer a more 'premium' grade glass filter. Their 'Nuances' range of ND's are every bit as expensive as the LEE Big and Little Stoppers (-5 and -10 stop neutral density filters), so I may have to start saving my pennies for a Cokin -5 stop ND (since I already own the filter holder and lens adapters).

Te Kinga Jetty & House Boat. OM-D E-M1 with 12-50 EZ lens. 1/100th @ f6.3, ISO 100. Polarizer

Once the sun was up, I moved around to the jetty to take some pictures of the lake bathed in early morning light. I kept the circular polarizer on the lens to intensify the blues of the lake and sky and was able to ditch the tripod and start shooting hand-held. I moved around the jetty trying out various compositions, but ended up preferring this vertical image with the jetty used to lead the eye into the image, where it then moves to the houseboat.

I prefer to keep my images as simple as possible - I guess that's my 'style'- (if I have a style), and when I'm composing an image it's usually more about what I leave out than what I include. I often have this internal dialogue when I'm shooting that discusses what I should or shouldn't be including before I take the photo. I guess I also look for strong leading lines and am a firm follower of the golden mean (and rule of thirds). All pretty standard stuff...

Te Kinga Frost. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Zuiko 12-500mm EZ. 1/320th @f6.3, ISO 100. Polarizer

I am also trying to be a bit more spontaneous with my photography as well.What does that mean? Often when I go out to shoot, I'm quite single-minded and have certain images already in my minds-eye that I'm going to get. I've driven past literally hundreds of beautiful photos and not stopped to take them because they weren't 'what I was looking for'. But I'm trying to stop more often when I glimpse something out of the corner of my eye - and the above photo is one such image. Driving out of Te Kinga to get to Lake Brunner, the 'old me' would have simply kept on driving past a scene like this because a 'lake' shot was the next on my list. But the 'new' me stopped and took the photo. And you know what - the new me is glad I did. It might just be my favourite image from all the ones I took that morning.

Lake Brunner - Moana. Olympus OM-D E-M1. 1/100th @f8, ISO 100. Polarizer

I did eventually make it to Moanna and get my lake shot - and yes folks, I think it's now official: I'm obsessed with jettys! Although honestly - what's not to like? General theme of all my images in the last month; a) they are very blue, and b) they have a jetty in them. Easy....

Lake Brunner Reflection. OM-D E-M1. 1/80th @ 88, ISO 100. Polarizer

See what I mean about everything I shoot being blue at the moment? Even the boat is blue! I wanted to make sure I got all of the tree and its reflection in the vertical image - so yes, that means a lot of blue sky and a lot of blue lake - enhanced even more by using a polarizing filter. In fact, it pays to be careful when using a polarizer, because you can occasionally got too far with it and make blues turn almost black. Just keep spinning the filter and watching the effect in the viewfinder of your camera. And remember, you can dial the effect down as well as up.

Shoe Fence, Moana. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. 1/500th @ f5.6, ISO 100. Polarizer

My last images of the morning were more of the spontaneous variety. On the way home I saw this fence, laden with shoes, and thought it would make a great shot, but kept on driving! So the new me told the old me to turn the car around and take some darn photos! So I did. And once again, I'm glad. The complementary blue and green, with the leading lines on the fence posts and wire, mixed in with the colour and shapes of the shoes, makes for a quirky and compelling image. And a great way to end another successful landscape shoot with the Olympus OM-D E-M1.

Fun with Filters

As a serious landscape photographer you'd think that I'd have an equally serious arsenal of filters. A polarizer, LEE Big & Little Stopper (-6 and -10 stop neutral density filters), plus a good selection of hard and soft graduated ND filters - at the very least!
 

Cokin 'P' Series Holder with Graduated ND filters

Well yes, I do have a polarizer, and a 0.9 (-3 stops) soft grad - both of the Cokin 'P' variety. But that's it. And if I'm honest, I don't even use them very often either! And that's generally down to laziness. Yes folks, I admit it, I'm a fairly lazy photographer. If I can get away with it, I won't use a tripod. I won't use a filter. Heck, I will even try not to use any accessories (like remote releases). I won't even use a polarizer even when I know it would be beneficial for the final image! Why not? Because, well, it's just too much of a hassle. You've got to get it out of the bag, set up the filter holder, fiddle around with adapter rings, etc... You get the point.

Laziness aside for a moment, the 'other' issue I have with filters is the expense. Have you seen the price of the LEE Big Stopper! Over $200NZ for one filter! Buy the Big Stopper, Little Stopper and a couple of hard and soft grads, plus the filter holder and adapter ring for your lens and your looking at well over $1000NZ. And I'm not just picking on LEE. Filters from Cokin and NiSi are similarly priced. When we start talking that amount of money, I start thinking of lenses not filters.

Yet having said all of that, I've been thinking very seriously lately about using filters a lot more in my photography. Why the change of heart? Well, it has a lot to do with the landscape photography vlogs I've been watching on Youtube lately. They all - and I mean ALL - make great use of filters (as well as tripods and cable releases), and I'm beginning to think there might just be something to all this fiddling about before you taker a photo (I jest - but just a little).

So I'm turning a new leaf this year. No more lazy landscape photographer. I've already got a Polarizer and a soft grad ND, so I'm halfway there with the filters. I'm seriously considering getting a 10 stop ND filter to go with them, for long exposure photography (probably a Cokin 'Nuances' 1024), but in the meantime I've dipped my toe in the water already with a recent internet purchase.

A whole set of 'ND' filters for the Cokin P system

If you use the Cokin 'P' (for Professional - I kid you not) square filter system like I do, then you will find a lot of cheap Chinese rip-off filters for sale on the interwebs. You will, of course, get what you pay for. And for practically a tenth of the price of the 'real deal', you can't really expect much. But then again, they must do something - right? If I'm going to pay $200+ for one filter down the road, then I'm going to damn well make sure I like using it! So what better way to practice than on the cheapy stuff first. And you can't get much cheaper than $25NZ for 7 no-name ND filters that a guy was selling recently on Trademe. I snapped them up, knowing full well that they were going to be flimsy, plastic (the more expensive filters are made from either resin or glass), horribly inaccurate in terms of neutral colour, and probably worse than useless. But I also figured that if I enjoyed using them, and wished I had better ones, then I would know that any serious money spent down the track would be well worth it. That's the theory anyway.

Long exposure with ND16 + ND8 + Polarizer. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. 30secs @f11, ISO 100

Long story short - I've only had them for a couple of days, but I'm having a blast! And surprisingly, the results actually aren't half bad (with a couple of caveats). The above image is a 30 second exposure made in the middle of a very bright day, and the cheapo plastic ND filters combined with my Cokin P circular polarizer have done a decent job. And the colour cast is actually pretty minimal - especially compared to a 'Tian Ya' ND filter I also have which has a horrible brown sepia cast to it.

Cobden Beach at Midday. OM-D E-M1 with Zuiko 12-50mm f3.5/6.3 EZ. 1/250th @ f11, ISO 100. No filter

Above is the 'control' image - the shot of the beach with no filter. This gave a reference point for how the colours should look once I started adding filters.

With Polarizer. 1/60th @f11. ISO 100

Simply adding the Cokin circular polarizer improves the image dramatically. It also has the added benefit of slowing the shutter speed by 2 stops.

With ND16 (-4 stops). 1.6secs @f11, ISO 100

Adding the ND16 neutral density filter has again slowed  the shutter down, now to the point of blurring some of the movement in the waves. In terms of a colour cast, it's introduced a very slight magenta tint to the white clouds, but overall not too bad.

With ND16 + Cokin 0.9 (-3stop) soft ND Graduate. 1.3 secs @f11. ISO 100

Adding the Cokin 3 Stop soft grad has helped to lower the density in the highlights, especially in the clouds (obviously) - but hasn't effected the overall shutter speed too drastically. Again,colours are looking pretty good.

ND16 + ND8 + Polarizer. 30secs @f11, ISO 100

Remember that caveat I mentioned earlier. Well, here it is in all its glory! That's some pretty serious flare spots. And they were present on quite a few of the images I took using the plastic ND filters. A lot - but not all. This was a very extreme torture test, in very bright conditions, at the time of day that I wouldn't normally be shooting at. So the nasty flare stuff doesn't really surprise me at all. Also, on closer inspection, lots of tiny bits of fluff and lint had adhered themselves to the plastic filters which probably didn't help matters.

Same as above, yet without the strong sun flares....

A quick clean, another shot done with the same settings - and viola, a different result. To be honest, I did clone out one lone flare spot in the sky, and a few are creeping into the top of the frame, but it's nowhere near as bad as the previous shot - with a simple clean!

So did I have fun with my new plastic ND filters? You betcha! Will I use them again? You betcha - can't wait. Except next time I won't try them under such torturous conditions. This lazy photographer may be turning a new leaf. Watch this space...