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Long Exposures with the Hasselblad 500C
You can have a lot of fun and do some remarkable things with film cameras and neutral density filters. Here are some basic tips and some creative ideas for how to use these filters to produce some remarkable film photos.
- ND filters are typically expressed either in stops of density or x(number) power, such as x8 or x16. A x2 filter is 1 stop, x4 is 2 stops, x8 is 3 stops, and so on. The x400 shown here are roughly 8.5 stops of density.
- ND filters can be a bit pricey, so buy the filter for the largest filter thread size across all your lenses and use stepping rings to inexpensively adapt that filter to smaller lenses.
- At their heart, the point of an ND is to diminish light, not necessarily to lengthen shutter speeds. While the most common use of ND filters is to increase shutter speeds, these filters can also be used to shoot ultra fast apertures (with shallow depth of field) in very bright conditions.
- If going for motion blur, keep in mind that essentially everything moves, it is just a matter of how long it may take to blur. Even the sun can be blurred with as little as a 15 minute exposure.
- With enough time, you can make things in motion disappear completely! You can even make a crowded scene appear empty by increasing the exposure time. Mechanical cameras, like the Hasselblad or Pentax K1000, are great for long exposures as you don't have to worry about battery drain.
- Don't forget to calculate your reciprocity failure! This differs from film to film and by length of exposure, so be sure to do some research and take notes.
- While ND filters are an excellent tool, they can also be a kind of coach as well. They allow you to embrace slowing down; encouraging you to invest more time and thought into your image making.
- Stack ND filters for absurdly long exposures but be wary of the color shifts caused by UV overexposure! Most ND filters don't have coatings to adequately suppress the overexposure of UV light. Of course, b&w film won't have this problem to the same degree.
- Oh, and lastly... Have fun!
za/sd
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