A sunset screams for a tripod. But there is this thing with tripods: they are a nuisance to carry around. Unless you spend quite a lot of money on a very lightweight one, they are pretty heavy and on top of that they are bulky. A good ND filter – although not heavy – also comes with an unfriendly price tag. For instance, a Singh-Ray Mor-Slo 10-stop (which is – at the time of this writing – considered the industry standard) starts at about $350 and even the Breakthrough X4 gets sold from $139.00 for a 6-stop up to $189.00 for a 10-stop. So, I often find myself breaking the rules of landscape photography, shooting without them.
Of course, this comes with a downside. I can not go low on ISO and shutter speed, so I always end up with more noise than I want and that is bad for prints. One day though, one day…
