Thanks guys. It was just good to get out and finally have a play with these graduated ND filters. I've had them on order since April or June but due to manufacturer shortages worldwide, I only just got them before Christmas.
Took a bit of getting used to. I used the hard edged 3 stop filter for these shots. Might have had it sitting a little low? The horizon has a dark band at the filter transition. I was expecting the hard edge to be more sharp(?), ie a quicker transition. Need to experiment more.
Still - I like the results in terms of these being pretty much straight out of camera. Normally you'd have to blend the foreground and sky as 2 separate exposures or risk the FG being too dark or the sky blown.
If you hand hold, use Live View, and dither the filter during the exposure, you can help eliminate transitions and gradation banding that sometimes occurs.
I've never used a filter holder and have always just preferred to hand hold.
H - I was using the filter holder. Have read about hand-holding and "feathering" (think that's the right term?) the filter. Will give that a go next time. But for the above shots with Sun so low on horizon, wouldn't that reduce the effect of the ND filter and blow that area out more? I really need to do some more testing/practise.
