Seascaping with Generic Photography Filters

Disclaimer: I am not a professional seascape photographer, I am just sharing my experience and point of view as a photography enthusiast.

Wanted to try out doing Seascape Photography? But you're on a tight budget like me?

Well one option is to barrow those Branded (but costly) Lee or Singh Ray filters from your photographer friends, assuming they would trust you enough to lend them to you :)

Another way is to try out those Generic filters, I got my ND8 and CPL filters for around 600.00 Philippines Pesos (around 15 US Dollars) a piece, ofcourse the price also depends on the size of your lens barrel.

My objective with using the ND8 filter is to get that cloudy effect on water, since we need to shoot it with relatively slow shutter speed.  With my initial tries, my ND8 was not enough so I stacked it up with my CPL to darken it further, and get some extra stops. Not the best solution, but it's the only one at hand during our shoot, so I had to improvise, I'll probably try to get an ND400 next time.

After I got back home, I simulated Graduated filters using photoshop filter plugins (again not the best solution for seascape photography) to darken just the skies, best is to use Graduated ND filters to minimize photoshoping and get a more natural effect.

I am not saying that we shouldn't patronize those branded filters, if you have the budget, by all means please go ahead and get them. As the saying goes, we get what we pay for.

The point I am driving here is that we can still enjoy seascape photography even without those branded filters, we just need patience, imagination, knowing the basics of light and filters to produce nice seascape photos, and Trust that our photos will turn out OK...  We have to start somewhere, and this is a good way to start, and we can invest more as we go along.

Here are some of my shots using my generic filters, hope you like them.

Shot Details: Nikon D90 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikkor Lens, f/22, 13", 18.0 mm, ISO 100

Shot Details: Nikon D90 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikkor Lens, f/22, 3", 18.0 mm, ISO 100

Shot Details: Nikon D90 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikkor Lens, f/22, 3", 200.0 mm, ISO 100

Shot Details: Nikon D90 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikkor Lens, f/22, 6", 18.0 mm, ISO 100