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Use welding glass as a 10 stops ND filter

Aug 20, 2017 by Udi Tirosh 20 Comments

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Neutral density filter reduces the amount of light going into the lens, so you can take long exposures even when the light is bright.

Long exposures blur anything moving, like water, clouds, or people. This can be very useful for making choppy water look smooth, making clouds streak, or getting rid of people at a tourist attraction.

These types of filters usually cost up to $200 (especially on big diameter lenses), but with this simple hack, you can make it for only $5.

Materials

  • Welding Glass – The welding glass can be purchased online or at any welding supply store. The welding glass that I got was a #12 grade. Most pieces of welding glass are tinted a color, mine is green, and I will explain later in the article about how to get rid of that horrible tint.
  • 3 rubber bands- I used the thick blue rubber bands from produce
  • Piece of cloth- a good size thick cloth, at least 16”x16”, depending on your camera/lens setup
  • Shutter release with bulb mode
  • Tripod
  • LED Flashlight

Instructions:

1. Find a scene with movement in it, like water, clouds, or people.

2. Set your camera up on your tripod and compose your shot now, because once your put on the welding glass, you will not be able to see out of your viewfinder.

3.Set the camera to bulb mode, and set your f/stop to 8 or above for a good DOF. My welding glass is grade #12, so I usually have to take a 5-6 minute exposure at f/8, iso 100. ALWAYS SHOOT IN RAW FOR THIS.

4. Put rubber bands around two sides of the welding glass, parallel to each other.

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

5. Take your lens hood, put it on the lens backwards, and pull the rubber bands around the lens hood.

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

6. Take your piece of cloth, and drape it over your camera, lens, and the corners of the welder’s glass, to prevent light from leaking in through the crack in between your lens and the glass. Then stretch your other rubber band over the glass so that it wraps around the lens hood and cloth. This creates a hood, like what you see on really old cameras.

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

7. Take the picture, using the bulb switch on your shutter release, and use a stopwatch if you have one to keep track of the time. The picture that will appear on your screen after you take it will be slightly color tinted (mine is green), and you will have to do some major white balance correction to fix it. Don’t worry, it will turn out normal color in the end.

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Post Processing:

To remove the tint made by the welding glass, you can either do basic white balance correction, turn it into black and white, or shoot in RAW mode, and do some extra steps below before using Photoshop or Lightroom.

Pre-editing and Editing:

Put your camera on a tripod and tilt it all the way backwards until your camera is facing the ceiling or sky.

Take the flashlight, turn it on, and set it down on the filter, so that it is looking at the LED.

Take a picture on P mode in raw.

Set that picture you took to your custom white balance.

Take another picture with the LED still on top of it. This picture should look like it’s in black and white.

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Put the white balance corrected picture (one that looked black and white on your camera) on your computer and convert it into a DNG using Adobe’s DNG converter. It’s a free Adobe download program for Mac and PC.

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Open your new .dng into Adobe DNG Profile Editor (another free program, but you have to make a free account with Adobe).

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

In the editor play around with the white balance until you get a color tone you want, then name it and export it to the preset folder (the picture on the side might not look corrected, but it will be in the end).

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Load the picture you originally took of your scene into Lightroom. Scroll down to camera calibration in Develop mode, click on the profile drop down menu, and select your saved profile (mine was named no green hue).

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

The picture will still look bad at this point, so go back up to the top and turn the tint to +150 (for green filter, for other color filters you may have to experiment a little).

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

11. Your picture should now look like it was taken right out of your lens. You may also want to do some work to reduce the vignetting that you may get.

Major white balance correction:

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Basic white balance correction

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

Black and white

Use Welding Glass As 10 Stops ND Filter

About The Author

This post is by Aaron Czeszynski, you can see more of his work in his Flickr stream.

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Filed Under: DIY Tagged With: Filters, Readers Projects

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.net

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

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John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

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