Is There a Filter for Being a Dope??

5:45am Friday morning (no joke). There I was, standing at the Marc station at the foot of Camden Yards in Baltimore. I got up that early hoping to catch a bit of "Golden Time", that brief moment as the sun rises and sets where colors just pop.

I was suppose to be on the water — having arranged a morning commute Baltimore style — water taxi from Locust Point to downtown. But my captain called me VERY early Friday morning late to say he was out — and so were all the water taxis. The city was repairing their docks.

I scramble.

With a commute on my mind, I headed to the nearest rail station camera in hand.

Here's where it all went funny...and I've got the pictures to prove it. Read on...

— Tom

 

First here's where the filters come in.

Turning on my camera I found my exposures were darker than they should have been. Pilot error I think. Change the F-stop, check the exposure meter on the top, Hmmm...nothing changes.

Photos still working but still...something strange.

Then two words hit me smack in the face: Neutral Density.

I still had it on from the day before. And as we had learned, that's just like dropping and F-stop. For those of you like me, here's an easy visual way to see what this means.

Both these photos are untouched and unchanged. Both were taken within 30 seconds of each other. Check out the difference:

First, with the Neutral Density filter set to on:

And now with the filter set to off — the proper setting for what I was doing this day:

Simple setting, BIG difference. Loved the ND filter the day before, hated it this morning. Live and learn.

—Tom