A few questions about ND Filters

sduk

sduk

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Sammy
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Hi folks, having recently made my car rig I have realised I need an ND filter to allow for longer exposures during the daylight.

Just got a few questions....

- These are for rig shots only, is it worth buying the £70 hoya filter over a £10 ebay one?

- I take it ND2, ND4, ND8 etc refers to the exposure levels (ie -2, -4, -8 etc) ?

- which level would be best for say a 15 second exposure on the rig during sunlight?

Anything else to consider?

thanks for the help,

Sammy
 
ND is the same series as ISO - ND is 1 stop, ND4 2stop ND8 3 stop and so on. 15 seconds you'd be looking at 5-10 stop filters. And yes, buy the best you can, cheap ones are terrible. Even 'Good' ones aren't always any good. (B&W Single coated, yeuch!)
 
The cheap one may not be particularly neutral. Meaning that when used you might get a distortion in the colours which you will have to edit out in Lightroom.
 
I've used cheap ND (£25) filters and always had horrendous colour cast from them, even singularly let alone stacked.

For £40 I'd spend the extra and buy my filter kit in the classifieds! That isn't just a shameless plug but to illustrate the point that when you consider what you get for your money used (ND8 filter and holder & a bunch of other filters) then the £40 seems a pretty big risk.
Plus a proper kit would offer you the flexibility of being able to mount on different lenses without stepping rings, plus use filters together e.g. ND8 & ND Grad
 
Avoid cheap filters.

Having tested some back to back with better filters the cheap ones made a mess of the image, I lost sharpness and the colours at times were all over the ace with cheap eBay jobbies.
 
adamdavi3s said:
I've used cheap ND (£25) filters and always had horrendous colour cast from them, even singularly let alone stacked.

For £40 I'd spend the extra and buy my filter kit in the classifieds! That isn't just a shameless plug but to illustrate the point that when you consider what you get for your money used (ND8 filter and holder & a bunch of other filters) then the £40 seems a pretty big risk.
Plus a proper kit would offer you the flexibility of being able to mount on different lenses without stepping rings, plus use filters together e.g. ND8 & ND Grad
Click to expand...

thanks for the advice mate, not able to buy one at the moment, gonna be a few months until I save up, wanna buy the manfrotto parts first :)



fastworldimages said:
Avoid cheap filters.

Having tested some back to back with better filters the cheap ones made a mess of the image, I lost sharpness and the colours at times were all over the ace with cheap eBay jobbies.
Click to expand...

ok dok will wait and get the hoya filter once i can afford it :)

thanks for the advice.
 
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