Images from MX-1

ND (neutral density) filter allows you to use longer shutter speeds. Useful if you want to control depth of field and shoot at wide open apertures on bright days, especially if you are also keen to keep ISO as low as possible. Also useful to do things like the blurry water thing - although the built in filter is not really strong enough to achieve the "full cliché".

Polarisers do also cut down the light entering the camera, like an ND filter, but their main purpose is to suppress reflections and thereby increase contrast and colour saturation. ND filters, other than allowing longer shutter speeds, should have a neutral impact on contrast and saturation.

Well I love my dedicated controls - perhaps we need to evolve a specific manually-controlled lever to engage that one

Thanks for the info JS.

You're right, the sky does have a kind of 'ND Filtered' look to it, but it doesn't really work well IMO - the issue is that the brightness has been reduced equally on all tonal ranges on the sky, bringing the shadows under the clouds down too much. And the bright cloud highlights are still blown.

Is this a camera applied effect MrB? Its interesting to see how it works on a 'stock' image like this - but I think ultimately separate PP work on a selected sky, bringing down the whitepoint and reducing the DR general in the sky generally, would be the best approach here, ie with just a single exposure to work with.

I didn't use any special features on those shots, Nigel, just small adjustments to brightness and contrast, and slight cropping of some of them, in PP.

I probably shouldn't have read the posts from Steve and Jon re. the ND filter - that's now another type of cliche shot to attempt, and add to all the others I do!

But thank you to you all anyway.

Philip

I'm waiting for my black MX-1 to arrive from those great guys at SRS ...,eenymac that hand strap on your MX-1 looks good ,where did you get it ? ...jeff...

Nice photo's

The MX-1 is a very good travel companion to take anywhere but that does not compromise it's ability to produce very good images:




I took this last weekend while traveling back from shopping up at Hull with my wife.

Thank you for your comment, col55555ine, and for your MX-1 image, Chris - was it a B&W shot, or have you converted it from colour? I did post a series of shots of an unusual bridge here, but they not as dramatic as yours!
See - Images from the MX-1

Philip

I converted it to B&W from colour in the camera

Very nice and a good advert for that camera

If I remember correctly, it cam from Prostrap, a Chinese seller on ebay. Nice and chunky and very comfortable for carrying the MX-1 in the hand for long periods.