any good starter kit to recommend for landscape photography?
Thanks!
Hi Remedy,
There are a few things to consider. The first is the lens/camera combination you intend to use the filters on, and if you intend to stack. If you intend to stack extensively and shoot a UWA perspective (anywhere from 14-20+mm in 35mm film terms) then you need to get a larger filter size to avoid vignetting. That is the first logical step, I would think.
The next logical step is your budget, and whether you will carry a lot of filters around. If everyone had a Doraemon black hole to store 8000 filters I think we'd all want to buy all the filters if we had the money. Assuming that you have a limited budget, my advice is to focus on the things that you CANNOT do without Photoshop, and whether you need such an effect or like it at all. Personal preference does play a huge role in things and just because many other people are doing long exposure photography doesn't mean you should jump on the bandwagon. The more commonly used filters that can't quite be replicated through digital manipulation include: Neutral Density filters, Circular Polarizers (note that you have uneven polarization on UWA perspective so you might avoid this if you intend to use the filters on UWA and this bothers you). Next comes Graduated Neutral Density filters. As I've pointed out earlier (I think I did) in our exchanges, these can introduce nasty casts, especially when stacked. Some people can live with it, some can't. I couldn't and I didn't want to buy a good set of filters (not willing to spend the money with upcoming commitments), so I resorted to digital blending.
For ND filters I suggest you skip Tianya altogether. Either Lee's Big Stopper or B+W ND filters would work (the primary decision here is screw-in vs slot-in).
For GND, Tianya is fine, but lends a moderate magenta cast as I've found earlier on; Hi-tech is more affordable but still has a light magenta cast especially when stacked (for the 0.9 strength and heavier)...
I hope this helps somewhat!