ND Filters
- Thread starter rEv09
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u must understand, ND are used to achieve certain effects.
in bright day, if u using DSLR, u just stop down, use low ISO or increase shutter speed. nobody mount on ND for day-to-day street photography.
in bright day, if u using DSLR, u just stop down, use low ISO or increase shutter speed. nobody mount on ND for day-to-day street photography.
Unless you are looking to shoot long exposures during the day or at very wide apertures ( or you are stuck with high speed film in your camera ), usually you will not need an ND filter.
Anyhow, the type of ND filter that you best need will depend on how many stops you are looking to drop the exposure. Sometimes a 4 stop works for me, sometimes an 8 stop works for me.
Ryan
Anyhow, the type of ND filter that you best need will depend on how many stops you are looking to drop the exposure. Sometimes a 4 stop works for me, sometimes an 8 stop works for me.
Ryan
Get ND Grad 4.
People say it for landscape only? Nope.
It is basically if you have unbalanced brightness & extremely contrast subject where bright is over-exposed, so it is difficult to meter.
Do remember, get the GRADUAL filter, flat one is normally of no use now with digital camera
Sample with ND Grad filter (#4) - taken from Anime Festival Asia 2008 - this figure of Saber (from Fate/Stay Night) in French Maid costume was under a spotlight - with her blonde hair for sure cause overexposure, and if you correctly expose her head (face & hair) you will not get the body cos it is dark blue. I took his with Cokin ND4 grad + polariser to reduce glare, and I still have to set EV-2.
I also flash so I get some detail from the costume.
Some part of the hand and the hair is still overexposed but I can live with that. This I took on 2nd day coming prepared.
Later using post processing I bring up the brightness of the shadow area a bit more and reduce a bit from bright area, and this is the result.
Below pics I took on 1st day coming unprepared.
Without ND Grad filter (best attempt). OK white balance a bit out but I cannot make it that better without resorting to spend hours with multi layer etc. You cannot see the legs after correctly exposing the face.
Without ND Grad filter (feel the burn). This is the worst. Granted it is a bit blur due to hand shake but you can see how the detail is lost due to overexposure of the hair. I am trying to correctly expose the face.
People say it for landscape only? Nope.
It is basically if you have unbalanced brightness & extremely contrast subject where bright is over-exposed, so it is difficult to meter.
Do remember, get the GRADUAL filter, flat one is normally of no use now with digital camera
Sample with ND Grad filter (#4) - taken from Anime Festival Asia 2008 - this figure of Saber (from Fate/Stay Night) in French Maid costume was under a spotlight - with her blonde hair for sure cause overexposure, and if you correctly expose her head (face & hair) you will not get the body cos it is dark blue. I took his with Cokin ND4 grad + polariser to reduce glare, and I still have to set EV-2.
I also flash so I get some detail from the costume.
Some part of the hand and the hair is still overexposed but I can live with that. This I took on 2nd day coming prepared.
Later using post processing I bring up the brightness of the shadow area a bit more and reduce a bit from bright area, and this is the result.
Below pics I took on 1st day coming unprepared.
Without ND Grad filter (best attempt). OK white balance a bit out but I cannot make it that better without resorting to spend hours with multi layer etc. You cannot see the legs after correctly exposing the face.
Without ND Grad filter (feel the burn). This is the worst. Granted it is a bit blur due to hand shake but you can see how the detail is lost due to overexposure of the hair. I am trying to correctly expose the face.
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if you have the interest, if you have the patience, if you have the drive
get all of them
all will be useful at one point in time or another.. :devil:
i would love to see you replicate misty water
or controlled scenes where the sun is not blown out
if you think nd and gnd filters are replaceable by photoshop.. the former is definitely not in most cases, and the latter can be done, but requires a lot of work in terms of blending.
Use a D3, meter for the sky and bring up the levels later...
surely go WOW :bsmilie:
Updated my post above with the 2 sample without ND Grad filter. 
Now you can see the difference.
By the way I put the ND grad filter 4 (the darker side up - to reduce the over-exposure of the face) and the clear version below to correctly expose the legs.
One other use of ND filter is if you want to use small F# (large apperture eg F1.6).
If you want slower shutter speed to have the panning effect, or whatever effect you are after then the photo may be overexposed. So ND filter is still required.
If the brightness is pretty much constant then no problem, but if there are bright spots then you are in trouble.
Those will be overexposed with you correctly expose the shadow.
OK you can do that with HDR but that is a lot of work and I am still using Photoshop Element 4 (dont want to spend money on software), plus HDR does not work really work with street-shot due to movement of subjects - wind etc.
Now you can see the difference.By the way I put the ND grad filter 4 (the darker side up - to reduce the over-exposure of the face) and the clear version below to correctly expose the legs.
One other use of ND filter is if you want to use small F# (large apperture eg F1.6).
If you want slower shutter speed to have the panning effect, or whatever effect you are after then the photo may be overexposed. So ND filter is still required.
If the brightness is pretty much constant then no problem, but if there are bright spots then you are in trouble.
Those will be overexposed with you correctly expose the shadow.
OK you can do that with HDR but that is a lot of work and I am still using Photoshop Element 4 (dont want to spend money on software), plus HDR does not work really work with street-shot due to movement of subjects - wind etc.
Here's a thought. Why not get all of them? Because there's really no "better" ND filter... You'd just have to select the right one for that particular situation. But if you're cash strapped, I suggest getting the GNDs first. I use them more often that my ND filters. But then again, that's me.
Good luck!
Don't over buy filters.
I find ND grad and gradual blue are my most used filters on top of polarizer, since I like taking pictures with sky, and took a lot of photo during overseas trips.
My experience tell me the rest like star 6, star 8, starburst, etc are money down the drain. Fancy but not very useful and you will keep it more in the drawer than bringing it around.
However if you are into portrait may be home made soft filter will be useful ( I was told to go buy stockings by a senior here :bsmilie: )
well said..:thumbsup:
digital or analogue, it is still photography..:heart:
Digital manipulation kills photography..:cry: just my humble opinion..
I think I have this, it is orange tint filter which make sunset when it is not orange enough LOL :bsmilie:
It is good if you are making silhouette effect.
But it will turn everything to orange so you will not be able to have that bluish & orange sky.
Not sure if there is a grad filter for this.
By the way, if today's sunset is no good, try tomorrow, or the day after and so on :bsmilie:
I dont find tobacco filter is nice for sunset as it is actually brown.
By the way when you are buying filter buy a system where the filter is rectangular and it uses brackets where you can put a few filters like cokin. that way if you upgrade lense, and the size is different, you only need to buy another adapter (from lense to bracket).
Er, also if it is just a colour filter, like that orange filter you can actually achieve that with photoshop.
I am not sure if you can do that for some special filter like gold filter (brings out the really nice autumn leave colours), or gradual blue, but for sure ND grad filter cannot be replaced easily using photoshop, very difficult.
Er, also if it is just a colour filter, like that orange filter you can actually achieve that with photoshop.
I am not sure if you can do that for some special filter like gold filter (brings out the really nice autumn leave colours), or gradual blue, but for sure ND grad filter cannot be replaced easily using photoshop, very difficult.
Haha.. But when we travel to places like Paris, photoshoot will not be the main focus so I would like to try to minimize the retakes. =]
Are you referring to a full set system that has the brackets and filters? May i know where to get them and roughly how much will it be?
Thanks for helping me so much aryanto!
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