10 Stop ND Filter Haze

Hello!

I have a quick question on a recent purchase. I recently purchased this:

Link to Product on B&H

I went out on the street where I live to try it out. I noticed on these images the green and magenta haze. It was fairly sunny on this day.

Nikon D7100

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II

Exposure time: 30 seconds

Aperture f/25

ISO 100

Is this result normal? Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you,

Jack

jackreynolds wrote:

Hello!

I have a quick question on a recent purchase. I recently purchased this:

Link to Product on B&H

I went out on the street where I live to try it out. I noticed on these images the green and magenta haze. It was fairly sunny on this day.

Nikon D7100

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II

Exposure time: 30 seconds

Aperture f/25

ISO 100

Is this result normal? Am I doing something wrong?

My guess would be a light leak possibly involving a sensor or other reflection that could separate the colors; it's also possible that it's electronic leakage, but I doubt that.

Try shooting with the camera lens out of direct sunlight (maybe even covered with something) while looking into the full sunlit scene; this is always the recommended protocol for using heavy ND filters in daylight. You might try making the same exposure with the lens cap on and see what you get, just to confirm it isn't a defective filter.

PS: Such light leaks are generally NOT considered a defect for a camera or lens, but simply a limitation exposed by your extreme use of the camera. If you think about it, dropping the light by 10 stops is dropping the light by pretty much the entire dynamic range of many cameras -- thus, the leaks you see would literally be below sensor noise if you weren't using this ND filter.

Your viewfinder is leaking light, use a cover on it - one came with your camera.

jannefoo wrote:

Your viewfinder is leaking light, use a cover on it - one came with your camera.

Excellent possibility.  I keep forgetting some people still use SLRs.... 

ProfHankD wrote:

jannefoo wrote:

Your viewfinder is leaking light, use a cover on it - one came with your camera.

Excellent possibility. I keep forgetting some people still use SLRs....

A potential alternative approach:

Rather than drop the light incoming by 10 stops, drop it by somewhere around 3 to get long enough exposure times that:

1)  The shot rate is slow enough that you can clear the buffer in continuous drive mode

2) The dead time in between shots in continuous drive mode is negligible compared to the shot time

Then take a series of images in continuous drive mode and stack in post.