Are Lee filters worth the money?

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I'm getting into landscape photography so I really need a set of neutral density graduated filters - ND2, ND4 and ND6 or ND8.

Everyone seems to think Lee filters are the best, and for that price they should be! I'm looking more at the Cokin filters for about £15 each. Are these reasonable? What about the Kood set? What about the unbranded sets from Hong Kong that you can buy very cheaply on Ebay? I've learned not to dismiss these cheap imported goods out of hand, they often do a perfectly decent job.

Any advice?
 
It's worth having a look at hitech filters too. They compare very well to Lee.
Cokin can have a colour cast, not really what you want from a filter.
 
I moved from Cokin due to the colour cast. Although expensive best move I made. Unfortunately you dont see many on the S/H market which I thinks says it all where as you often see Cokin
 
Bill Roberts said:
It's worth having a look at hitech filters too. They compare very well to Lee.
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no they dont... i have quite a few of each... and there is absolutly no comparison, lee are in a leauge of there own compared to hitech and cokin. hitech may have less of a colour cast then cokin, but it is still there in their grads, having tried all three... if you have the money there is no other choice than lee
 
I would say yes , Lee filters are worth the money. I have a set of hi-techs and even though I love them, and individually they have little or no colour cast (depends on length of exposure), when stacked (three together) there is a definate magenta cast. It's nothing you can't sort out in Lightroom/ Photoshop, but balancing the colours does take some time.

Also, even though I have a lovely soft lined filter pouch and look after the filters, they do scratch a bit too easily for me. When I get the cash, I'd buy a set of Lee's.

Saying that, if you haven't used grads / ND filters before, I'd still recommend a set of Hi-techs to see how you go and whether you use them or not before spending a small fortune. I use mine alot, so now see the value of getting the Lee versions.
 
All filters have some colour cast but some are cleaner than others. Corkins have a pretty bad magenta colour cast, Lees have a slight cast, Singh Ray have a slight cool cast. The more expensive the filter the more optically clear the resin/glass that is used in its manufacture. It ends up being a case of diminishing returns.

Would I recommend Lee, yes, but I think you should choose what you can afford or what is right for you. I'd rather have one very good expensive filter and add to this than have loads of ok ones and have to replace them all at some point. You pay a lot of money for the quality of your camera and lens, why not the filters you put in front of them?

Simon
 
never used cokin filters, but hi-techs are pretty good when you don't stack them. stacking 2 and 3 stop soft grad is not too bad, but when I stack 3 stop soft and hard grad, it's bad. You get strong purple/magenta cast where the filters overlap.

But... for the price of 1 lee, you can get a set of hi tech filters... I think it's still worth buying hi-tech especially if you are just starting with landscape. In time, you can also find out which filter you use most, and maybe buy a lee filter in the future..

one thing also worth considering is that lee filters are sold out at most places I think.. at least that's what online websites say...
 
Like others, I moved from Cokin because of the horrid colour casts. Been using Hi-tech filters on a Lee Foundation holder and 77mm UWA adapter ring for a few months now and love them! The 1.2 ND produces a slight warm cast if it's stacked but even then it's only half of what the Cokin's used to produce. If you can afford Lee's however, go for it :thumbs:
 
Hmmm. But the Cokin only produce a colour-cast? Surely this can be removed in PP quickly enough? Hitech do sound the best option for now.
 
for now yes...

for now being the key word... give it a few months/ maybe a year, and youl want a lee set, theres just no comparison, why not just buy the best to start with and save buying two sets eventually
 
Lee are top drawer - no doubt about it.

Hi-tech are great for the money and unlike Cokin are pretty 'Neutral'

I'd agree with Existent - get a set of 3 Hi-tech grads (£30 ish) - soft or hard depending on the type of horizons you're after. If you think grads are for you (some folk soon loose interest) then move to Lee once you know what numbers you're making good use of.
 
If you are shooting Digital with a tripod filters are totally unnecessary. As much as it is nice to get it right in camera, you will get better results with a careful exposure blend (layer mask/graduation etc) as you don't need to stick to the straight lines that graduated filters have.
 
ruvor said:
If you are shooting Digital with a tripod filters are totally unnecessary. As much as it is nice to get it right in camera, you will get better results with a careful exposure blend (layer mask/graduation etc) as you don't need to stick to the straight lines that graduated filters have.
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Are you saying PP means you don't need ND grads ?

Remeber ND grads allow you to be flexible with shutter speeds in the foreground - it's not just about darkening the sky.
 
But there's times when you want to use a slow(er) shutter speed to capture some movement which would result in a burned out sky.

I accept you can expose for sky and bring back foreground detail but you can't bring back a burned out sky on a shot that required longer foreground exposure.

ND grads come into their own when it comes to movement and shutter speed rather than just balancing exposure which of course can be done PP.
 
yea, but i'm talking about blending 2 exposures, not trying to pull back detail from a RAW. So for example if you had a 2 stop ND grad, you take 2 shots 2 stops apart and use a graduated layer mask to blend them - it's exactly the same as using a 2 stop grad, just without the decreased image quality (although pretty much negligible) from adding an extra piece of glass between the camera and scene.
 
Ah - multiple exposures - yes - I guess you can.

I'm a PP man but If somebody was new to the 'theory' of grads I would always encourage the use of them to understand what's going on.
 
Having made the mistake of believing Hi-Tech filters to be as good as Lee, that's £200 I wasted. Even the holder is a little iffy. Better than Cokin? Yes. Will you sell them in a year once you've saved up the money for the Lees you should have bought originally? Certainly...

The lighter ones seem fine, but the darker ones have an awful cast that is very difficult to PP out. This is much worse when you stack...
 
I recently bought a Cokin Z-Pro ND Grad filter set, unwilling to spend the money necessary for an equivalent Lee setup, and judging from the stock position, probably unable to as well. Landscapes isn't really my thing, and I bought the set really just to give me a fighting chance on the odd occasion I might want such filters.

Here is an example of the colour cast from the darkest filter. This is a simple sheet of white paper, illuminated by light from a north facing window. The white part is an area where there was no filter at all. There might be a bit of a cast, but for my occasional needs I don't consider it to be very severe and I can live with it well enough.

20100509_092323_3455_LR.jpg
 
rasmusrok1 said:
if you were to buy one which one would you buy?
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When I bought my first one it was a 2stop hard, as recommended to me. Then I added a 1stop hard. You can stack them giving 3 stops.

If it's natural looking ( and correctly exposed) skies you are looking for I get very good results from the 1stop and a polariser. Sometimes the 2stop just looks too dark.

I don't use a holder either, instead I just hold the filter gently but firmly against the rim of the lens. Its easy enough to do on a tripod.
 
ruvor said:
If you are shooting Digital with a tripod filters are totally unnecessary. As much as it is nice to get it right in camera, you will get better results with a careful exposure blend (layer mask/graduation etc) as you don't need to stick to the straight lines that graduated filters have.
Click to expand...

so you would rather take multiple shots, and then blend them on photoshop, ever single time? that sounds worse than the negligible quality reduction of the filter (if any)...

but that's just my opinion...
 
existent said:
so you would rather take multiple shots, and then blend them on photoshop, ever single time? that sounds worse than the negligible quality reduction of the filter (if any)...

but that's just my opinion...
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no, i actually do use a set of lee nd grads, but that's mostly because I shot a whole lot of stuff on film. If I didn't use film at all I would probably sell them. Blending 2 exposures can produce better results because you aren't limited by the straight line of the filter.
 
I have Lee 'Warm-Up' and 'Cool' sets back from when I shot film as well as Fluo and Tungsten CC filters and a 'soft' filter set for portraits (though seldom used...).
Always meant to get some grads, but never got round to it... and seldom shoot landscapes anyway, so...
 
Is the big stopper released yet? WEX say its still pre-order but see people talking about having one?!
 
I shoot mostly landscape/seascape and i've tried a few different type of filters. Lee are BY FAR the best i have used.

Yes they are expensive but why pay thousands of pounds on a camera and lens then put a cheap bit of glass in front of it? Just doesn't make sense to me.
 
Yeah the Lee Big Stopper has been out a little while now, but everywhere is out of stock. I got one when they were first anounced and I've put a little review/first impressions look at it on my blog.

Its a lovely bit of kit! :-P

Simon
 
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