I got my ND8 filter this week so of course I just had to try it, despite the snow-slash-sleet-slash-rain that was falling from the sky. The Stormjacket works fine for the camera, and shooting water means that the camera is pointed down so the front of the lens is protected from the drops.
All I can say is that long exposures are not a problem anymore. It was a relatively dark day so I think I could’ve gotten 15-20 sec exposures without the ND8, but the point was to test it so I used it stacked with the polarizer anyway. The longest exposure I tried with was 25 sec but sharpness becomes a serious issue; I’ve no idea how people get sharp shots with slower shutter speeds. I think I will stick to those 15-20 secs, that’s enough to give me the kind of effect I am looking for without sacrificing all too much with the sharpness.
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Something else that is slow is my computer. I got an extra 512 MB RAM and stuffed it in… and it didn’t show up. So I thought maybe it’s broken, and tested by removing the older modules (2×512 MB). No problems with the new module. So I put in the old RAM again and booted up – only to discover that my computer still thinks that it only has 512 MB. I tried with swapping the modules, tried with each one individually, tried different memory slots (only the first slot seems to work alone – or the other two are broken. Which there weren’t before, because it still showed 1 GB after I inserted the new module the first time). But no matter what, my computer is now operating with half a gig instead of the 1.5 GB I was hoping to have. Not much fun when editing large pictures!
Gonna have to start surfing the tech forums… Maybe there’s some magic way to tell the PC that is has extra memory. Yeah and pigs fly.