I was standing on top of a rocky shelf at daybreak as waves crashed all around me.  Light from a new-born sun sliced across the ocean and glanced off craggy boulders in front of me.  I had already fitted a three-stop neutral density filter to try and get a swirling sea effect, but I really needed an even slower shutter speed.  So I added a polarising filter, which gave me the effect I wanted as well as saturated warm colours and reduced unwanted reflections.

Then I went to take it back off.  I couldn’t, it was stuck fast.  Perhaps I had screwed it on too enthusiastically; perhaps a grain of sand had been picked up and was now wedged tight in the threads.  I don’t know.  All I knew was that I now had two filters stuck together tighter than the clasp on a Yorkshireman’s wallet.

Back at base I almost gave myself a heart attack trying to unscrew the filters, but they wouldn’t budge.  I tapped them, I banged them; I tried twisting them one way and then the other.  I even shouted at them, for some strange reason that only seemed to affect me.  I was running out of ideas and decided that I had applied enough brute force and ignorance, now it was time to try a different approach.  I would try the appliance of science.

I poured hot water over one filter, thinking that it would expand and release its grip.  No joy.  Next I decided to try the opposite; I put the filters in a sealed plastic bag and then left them in my freezer for a short while.  Twenty minutes later both filters screwed apart with no problems at all.

So, what’s the tip?  Clearly, it’s don’t waste time shouting at your filters.

Notes on the title.

‘Tips from the Field’ suggests that you will find pearls of wisdom in what follows.  This isn’t necessarily true, a more accurate heading would be ‘Ways in which I messed up and sometimes got away with it’, but that’s a bit too wordy for a title.

‘#1’ suggests that there are more tips to follow.  This may or may not be true (I don’t have any others in mind at the moment, but I’m always finding new ways to mess things up so who knows…) however, this is still the first of its kind and so the title stands.