The last few days of beautiful weather came to an end today with overnight thunderstorms and strong coastal winds.

My plan was to use an inexpensive variable ND filter to smooth out the rough seas but when I cranked the filter to anything past a couple of stops it began to create strange overall light, dark and colour cast effects making almost useless for my intended application.
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To get a realistic image I had to only use the filter at the lightest of its variable range and rely on a small aperture to give me long exposures. The problem with f/22 however was the detail in the image became soft.
In the end it was nature doing its thing that got me to this exposure with the rapidly dropping ambient light I was able to get both a long exposure at a reasonable aperture.

So the cheap ND filter was no value for money after all and a good one is now on my wish list.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 446, Stormy’ 3.2s f/13 ISO50 17mm