ESFotoClix Blog

Until now, I have avoided the use of neutral density filters to slow down my exposures. Having to cart an adapter and several filters to get just the right number of stops in light reduction up and down a steep trail or fiddling with them on a windy beach hasn’t appealed to me — not until I heard about Singh Ray’s Vary-ND and Vary-N-Duo.

The Vary-N-Duo comes with neutral density and polarizer filter functionality combined, and this appealed to me, especially after I saw the demo photo at the Singh-Ray site. A single, fairly light device, easy to carry and install, it seemed ideal for my Nikkor AF-S 17-35 f2.8.

Vari-N-Duo on AF-S 17-35 lens

As you can see, the Vari-N-Duo has an outer ring, used to adjust the neutral density filter, and an inner ring (closest to the lens) to adjust the polarizer.

I took the filter for a test-drive, and quickly discovered that even at 20mm, and even though I purchased the thin mount, the filter vignettes heavily. It didn’t become usable until around 24mm. Before I show some sample shots with the Vary-N-Duo, here is the scene I captured, without the filter.

Nikon D700 & AF-S 17-35 @ 24mm, f/16, 1/60 sec, ISO 200

For my outdoor shots, I don’t like to close down aperture below f/16, and neither do I want to take my ISO below the base ISO 200 setting. As you can see in the above example, even in less than full sun (8:30am), the shutter speed I get is 1/60 sec, enough to blur the water, but not nearly enough to get the “foamy look.”

This next photo uses the Vari-N-Duo at about 1/2 of its maximum setting. As the manual suggests, the increase from the filter’s minimum setting of 2 2/3 stops to its maximum setting of 8 stops is not linear and cannot be measured using the line increments, which are more of a rough guide. Best let the meter tell you what the exposure should be and adjust should the meter misread due to low light.

Nikon D700 & AF-S 17-35 @ 24mm, f/16, 1/3 sec, ISO 200
Vary-N-Duo at 1/2 of its maximum neutral density setting

The two sample shots that follow use the Vari-N-Duo’s maximum neutral density setting of 3/4 max and maximum, respectively.

Nikon D700 & AF-S 17-35 @ 24mm, f/16, 1/1.3 sec, ISO 200
Vary-N-Duo at 3/4 of its maximum neutral density setting

Nikon D700 & AF-S 17-35 @ 24mm, f/16, 1.3 sec, ISO 200
Vari-N-Duo at its maximum neutral density setting

You will notice how for each of the samples I also varied the polarizer effect. I took several more samples, varying the polarizer effect and neutral density setting, and the filter produces some interesting effects.

Note also how it appears that at least for the scene I photographed, the Vari-N-Duo does not produce 8 stops of light reduction at its maximum setting. Since my non-filtered exposure was 1/60, closing down 8 stops from that baseline we get: 1/30 sec (1 stop), 1/15 (2), 1/8 (3), 1/4 (4), 1/2 (5), 1 sec (6), 2 (7), and 4 (8). Since I got an exposure of 1.3 sec at the Vari-N-Duo’s max setting, either it is not working as advertised, or I under-exposed by 2.7 stops. A histogram examination of the last exposure I posted above reveals that indeed there’s some under-exposure. Through application of exposure compensation in post-processing I can see only 0.6 EV before the histogram clips. So I’m still 1.1 stops short.

Nikon D700 & AF-S 17-35 @ 24mm, f/16, 1.3 sec, ISO 200 +EC=0.6EV in ViewNX
Vari-N-Duo at its maximum neutral density setting

However, in addition, it appears that the first exposure clips the blues by about 0.3 EV. Add that into the mix, and now I’m only 0.8 stop short. I’ll keep digging into this and coming up with other test cases to see what I find.

I’ll definitely need to do more testing to familiarize myself with how the Vari-N-Duo works, learn its idiosyncracies and better integrate it into my field workflow. Overall, it looks promising.

To summarize, the Vari-N-Duo does produce significant vignetting, and this may persuade some to stick with the more traditional neutral density (and/or polarizer) approach. Cost may also discourage many from getting it. On the plus side, the Vari-N-Duo offers a variety of polarizer and neutral density settings in a compact, easy to carry package, and might come in handy for the landscape, back-packing shooter.

If you have been following along in this blog’s entries on Black and White photography, you may have found at least one reference to Michael Freeman’s Master Black and White Digital Photography. Putting the bottom line on top, I’ll say that I recommend this book to anyone trying to improve his/her understanding of B&W photography.

If like me you have been feeling like your digital B&W photographs don’t match up to the richness, tonality or contrast of what others have done with film, and if you have bought into the thinking that digital cannot produce film-like results, Michael Freeman will convince you otherwise. His claim that digital B&W conversions can allow for even greater freedom and more striking results than were possible with a pure film development and printing process certainly surprised me. After outlining how film photographers would pre-visualize B&W and use filters to accentuate one color’s contribution to the B&W tonal range, Freeman states:

“Digital black and white has largely overturned this. Indeed, it is impossible to overstate the significance of digital tools in creating black and white images. there are many, including layers, masks, channels, and curves, and the permutations, when using them together, are, virtually endless. At the heart of all this, however, is the ability to manipulate the three independent color channels, red, green, and blue, so as to control — again with infinite choice — the tonal value of all the colors in a scene. This is entirely new, and its potential is only now being explored.”

Freeman goes on to lead us in an exploration of the benefits and advantages of digital B&W photography. Along the way, he provides insight into how color changes into shades of gray, how to gauge which color emphasis will work out best for the image, and the fine-tunable flexibility we have in deciding how this transformation takes place through the use of Channel mixer. While in the film days we had a finite set of color filters to bias emphasis toward one color, today through digital mixing of channels we have a nearly infinite set of virtual filters and gradations available to us. Secondly he shows us an equally large number of possibilities when manipulating contrasts between shadows and highlights through histogram adjustments, discusses how to preserve highlights and describes how to deal with noise. Freeman also discusses how to finish a B&W photo with toning and other techniques, and closes out with a section on printing for final output, without which the discussion would feel incomplete.

All this, and more, Freeman achieves through short and to the point 2 page topics, each of which conveys a specific point, building up to the next, making both for easy reading and comprehension of the material. If you’re a Photoshop user you will feel right at home, since that is the author’s preferred tool and the one from which he shows the most examples. Freeman also briefly discusses the usage of third party tools, again with concrete examples. Freeman proves himself a good teacher, and by the end of Mastering Black and White you will feel like you have completed a hands-on workshop.

As I mentioned in a previous installment on the book “Ansel Adams in Color,” Adams’ reservations regarding color photography hinged a great deal on his view of how a photo portrays reality. His view on realism is perhaps best represented by his statement that “as photography approaches the simulation of reality it withdraws from the esthetic experience of reality.” He goes on to clarify he means this in the artistic license sense and exempts work whose aim is to remain documentary faithful.

With his view of reality in photography I think we can be assured that Ansel Adams did not mean he felt free to turn a Yosemite landscape into one of the surface of Mars. He understood his art remained connected with reality, though not necessarily aiming to distort it beyond recognition. Part of what disturbed him about some color photography work he saw was the tendency to make it better by making it redder, to pump color volume beyond the real to overcome a photograph’s lack of impact. Adams saw his photographs as representations and interpretations of reality, but not void of it. After all, without reality, what is there to represent or interpret?

When it came to “realism” as it relates to color photography, Ansel Adams also pointed out what many of us have noticed when adjusting white balance on our newer digital camera photos: we often are going by memory of what the scene actually looked like, anyway. Isn’t that an interpretive exercise? More pronounced an objection, however, Adams pointed out the greater reluctance to depart from literal representation of reality when one views a color photograph. Since we experience the world in living color, viewers will give a B&W photograph the benefit of the doubt without faulting it for being “unrealistic” or “cooked.” Modify colors in a photograph beyond certain expectations, and some may turn it off as “garish” (Adams’ own word) or “overcooked.” As he put it:

“In thinking about the ‘accuracy’ of color photography, we should review the characteristics of photography in general in terms of representation and interpretation. Black-and-white photography is accepted as a stylized medium; values are intentionally accented or subdued in reference to their ‘photometric-equivalent’ value. There is little or no ‘reality’ in the blacks, grays and whites of either the informational or expressive black-and-white image, and yet we have learned to interpret these values as meaningful and ‘real.’”

For me this and other thoughts Adams expressed about color ring true. As I have been experimenting with B&W through digital techniques, I too have slowly discovered a greater sense of freedom to achieve a particular purpose. At times I have seen myself departing from reality by a greater extent than I would be comfortable with in color. However, I have also struggled with locating and maintaining the line of tension where reality and its interpretation connect. As much latitude as B&W conversions may give me, were I to choose the “wrong” channel mix to render African-American skin tones as light and Caucasian skin tones as dark, it is unclear as to whether such a rendition would be effective or accepted. One can conceive where such an interpretation might be desirable, as for instance when wanting to portray racial or color blindness. In general, however, if I were the viewer of such an image, I would find it distracting.

I have Adams to thank for helping me sort out the meaning of what some term as “actuality,” a sense that though manipulated or void of color, an image retains some sort of equivalency with the actual scene even if it does not maintain literal accuracy.