Haida 10 stop filters

hewhoknows

hewhoknows

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Matt
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Has anyone ever tried the Haida 10 stop ND filters? They seem pretty cheap on fleabay at £39.00 for a 77mm version and wondered if they are any good??

_MG_7219s.jpg
 
Ive got a few pieces of welding glass too but was thinking of trying a dedicated filter and these were extremely low priced. Was hoping someone had tried them to give me an insight of their quality
 
Did you ever buy one of these - as I am looking at the same? I have the LCW version for my other lens, but am keen to find out if this one is worth buying.
 
just spotted this thread.

i'd be interested to know if these are any good too. i've also been looking at the Heliopan 10 Stop filters too.

This has been brought about by the impressive shots i've seen with the Lee 10 stop filters.. then realising they are like gold dust to get hold of. I was hoping the screw in alternatives might be a good option.
 
As a general rule of thumb,"you get what you pay for".

Why spend hundreds of pounds on good glass to then shove crap filters in front of it?

There is a reason why the likes of B&W, Lee and Heliopan charge the prices they do. It's a false economy to purchase these cheap filters from Fleabay because, in general, they are a waste of time.

Andy
 
Keebsuk said:
There is a reason why the likes of B&W, Lee and Heliopan charge the prices they do. It's a false economy to purchase these cheap filters from Fleabay because, in general, they are a waste of time.

Andy
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Depends I guess, if you have low expectations of them and the images are never going to go further than 1000pixel wide on the internet then they should be fine. Sure you're going to loose overall resolving power, but on the upside you can do some fantastic things with a 10 stop filter.
 
I have seen the new Hitech Pro Stop has favourable reviews and cheaper/more accessible than Lee. Worth looking at. Anyone have one of these and recommend it? 85mm or 100mm recommended?
 
Just bought the hitech 10 stop 85mm after reviews on here. Waiting for my filter holder and attachment ring to come through. Will post pics soon enough.
 
Keepsake said:
As a general rule of thumb,"you get what you pay for".

Why spend hundreds of pounds on good glass to then shove crap filters in front of it?

There is a reason why the likes of B&W, Lee and Heliopan charge the prices they do. It's a false economy to purchase these cheap filters from Fleabay because, in general, they are a waste of time.

Andy
Click to expand...

I bought the Haida 10stop a few weeks back, cost me £39.99 and I felt it was a good way to 'test' if i liked shooting long exposures before spending alot of cash on a quality big stopper. Having never shot daylight long exposures before I wasn't about the spend over £100 on one just to realise I didnt enjoy it, therefore a sensible purchase. At the end of the day I agree they probabaly dont touch the quality a B&W or Lee would but they serve a purpose, just as lower end lenses do, for people on a budget.

As for the quality of the lens, ids say its ok. It does leave a blue colour cast but its pretty easy to remove that in post processing. I havent seen any issues with clarity of sharpness drop off but then again almost all my images need sharpening anyway due to me shooting RAW.

I will agree with Keepsake when he says you get what you pay for, thats true in this instance. However, a 40squid filter has been pretty perfect for me as it fitted with my budget and is good enough to use whilst im learning, and some of the LE shots ive posted on here using the filter have had good feedback and comments (Thread 1 & thread 2). If I start to get good at LE shots ill invest in a top of the line one thats for sure.
 
I'm thinking this filter is probably a decent buy for £40. So it's a bit blue, as Matt says. How blue? The Lee Big Stopper is also a (tiny) bit blue, so is my LCW 500ND, and plenty of people have paid £100 for a B+W and got orange images.

Shoot Raw, and correct in post. It you want critically accurate colour, you need to do that anyway with any of these things. Or do a custom white balance. Pretty easy really.

I think it's sold by Camera Gear UK on ebay, in Norwich. Good supplier.
 
I'd also be interested in the colour cast - if you can do a comparison using a fixed WB (daylight if possible) of a sheet of white paper that would be handy.
 
i've just bought one off the very same as you say ^^^ Richard. Waiting for it to arrive now. I don't see any issues with dropping £40 on a filter and seeing how i go on. To be honest, the amount of time i manage to get out and shoot, i really couldn't justify spending treble that just so i can 'have a go now and again'
 
Here's a shot straight out of the camera, no editing at all apart from a slight tweek on the exposure as it was a tad dark (could of done with a few more seconds).

There has been NO alteration on colors or any other processing at all so this is what you'd get when you load it into photoshop, lightroom or whatever you use


Haidabluecast-1.jpg


From that I got this:


Tower Bridge long exposure by Matt_Giles, on Flickr




This particular image was best suited to a mono conversion but you can remove the blue colour cast with the temperature and tint sliders in cameraRAW quite easily
 
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That's a bit blue, but not a million miles out. I'm wondering if you just put the white balance on the Shade setting it wouldn't be far out for rough working, until you correct in post. Or maybe up to 8000-10,000K on manual WB.

Next question - what's the density? How close to ten stops?
 
HoppyUK said:
That's a bit blue, but not a million miles out. I'm wondering if you just put the white balance on the Shade setting it wouldn't be far out for rough working, until you correct in post. Or maybe up to 8000-10,000K on manual WB.

Next question - what's the density? How close to ten stops?
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Yeah it is pretty blue, and ive shot all mine using auto white balance and havent really tried altering to cloud or kelvins so cant really say how that would turn out. Ill try it next time im out with it and let you know
 
mine arrived on friday, so i tested it out yesterday in the garden. f/22, 30 secs.. put the camera on top of a wall in the garden to keep steady.

This is SOOC, the only PP i did was cloning out all the dust spots ... of which there were many!! The long exposure at f/22 showed up everything. Next job for me... clean the sensor!!

Quite happy with the result though for a quick test shot. Pretty good colour in the sky. Not bad for £40 :shrug:


IMG_3507 by leftcurl, on Flickr
 
These photo's look great, I'd really like to give them a go myself. Can anyone link me up to these £40 ones as all I could find was these Heliopan ones at £50.
 
hewhoknows said:
Did you set a custom white balance or have you altered it in post? Looks good mate, nice and sharp and the colours looks pretty bang on
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no, just AWB and away we go. i wanted to see how it would look without tweaking anything and this is what i got. Ok, so it was a great day for it, with a nice blue sky and a bit of wind to give the clouds some movement - but it gives me confidence now to go out and give it a bash in varying conditions and lighting.

bensambrook said:
These photo's look great, I'd really like to give them a go myself. Can anyone link me up to these £40 ones as all I could find was these Heliopan ones at £50.
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here is their store on fleabay (y)
 
Thanks for this i don't do enough of this type of shooting to justify another £140 for a second one for my 10 - 20, and i have a b & w for my 18 - 55
 
wow, cant believe you had zero colour cast, which is very weird because I always set AWB and get the same cast on all my shots :(
 
hewhoknows said:
wow, cant believe you had zero colour cast, which is very weird because I always set AWB and get the same cast on all my shots :(
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i was using a canon :LOL:
 
Mine arrived today, got the 58mm ND3.0 for just under £25 I think. Can someone give me some advice on how to use it effectively :p
 
67mm Haida 10 stops on eBay at £30.98 at the moment.

Worth a go ?
 
can only echo what's been said before.. it's not a cheap gimmick.. it does the job pretty well and for the money it's a no brainer for someone wanting to dip their toes in the water for long exposures.


IMG_5662.jpg by leftcurl, on Flickr

Issues with colour casts have not been evident in my shots.. not sure if that's down to the lenses / camera / ambient light :shrug: but i've had to do very little PP with my shots apart from the normal levels / contrast / sharpen tweeks which i'd do in every shot anyway.
 
I think it's this month's advanced photographer magazine (the one with the D800 review) has a full group review of several of the 10 stop filter options, including the Haida. It seems to review well, in fact all of them do. Looks damn good value to me. I'd probably go for one myself if I wasn't using a Lee system.
 
coopersim said:
I'm undecided what lens one of these would be best on, 35mm or 18-105?
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It'll work well on either but if you're wondering which size filter to buy, I'd go for a 77mm and buy step up rings for each of your lenses. That way you have covered most eventualities if you want to use it on other lenses in future.

Or buy a 67mm one to suit your 18-105 and buy a 52-67 adaptor to use it on your 35.
 
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