For those who might be interested in the approach, in all these shots shown, I worked with a 1000x ND Filter, in case you never used such a Filter, it reduces the light that hits the lens by factor 1000, which is a helluva lot, plus an additional Circ. Pol.
It was a pleasant experience, the pictures were taken on midday to be able to 'somewhat' use this filter combination, which is a challenge to say the least. The main challenge here is to see a bloody thing in the viewfinder, and having said that the Sony Alpha 900 has has probably the very best viewfinder in the entire DSLR market. Naturally, due to the extreme reduction of Light, I took a cloth over my head and waited a few seconds before the eye gets adapted from blazing midday light to this level of darkness, this helps.
I am quite fond of this technique, it is also a little hit and miss, as the blur is somewhat unpredictable, but there is one thing that can be done if you are patient enough. I observe the wave patterns, the cycles, and try to time the shots, which were in the 10-30 sec region, to catch the 'nicest' (biggest) cycle to sit somewhat in the middle of the shooting time. This allows for a picture like the below to not only have a wave pattern being blurred into a pleasant 'fog', but still shows the wave itself to a degree.
- Am I making sense? - LOL
Another aspect I found important is impeccable quality of Filters used, and as always, impeccable technique, using mirror lockup and add time the longer the lens used, in of the middle picture for example, set to 250mm and a 10 sec exposure, the mirror lockup was round about 8 seconds before I pressed the shutter.
Long tele shots like these are only successful on a rather wind still day on the beach in my opinion. But this is not out of my experience, I never would even try this when the wind would not allow the lens to stay as motionless as possible. Having said that, I do not know how it might work out when there are moderate winds, and one would, contrary to what is normally suggested, enable the image stabilizer. I simply do not know whether this would work on long exposure. Something to try out....
.... enough blue for now - grins - ....