ND/Grad Filters HELP!!!!

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Can any one suggest an ND/Grad filter for landscape? I have a Sigma 15 - 30mm wide angle lens which is designed to take gel filters because the fixed lens hood has no thread on it. However, the hood is fitted witha metal ring with a 82mm thread. What's the best filter (ie grade # and or colour, grey, blue etc,) for keeping the sky detail and the foreground at the correct exoposure?

I've tried adding grads in Elements but it's not great. Makes the areas of the pics it's applied to a bit soft and milky. I've also tried combining multiple exposures but that's also time consuming.

Just thought it'd be nice to be able to edit a shot which is correctly exposed all over to start with.
 
ND Grads are the best way to sort out the exposure as you say. In camera is still best.

I don't know your lens but many people just simply hold their large square ND grads (0.6 or 0.9, hard or soft) over their lens without filter holders. Especially wide angle where vignetting is an issue.
 
yup, Gart, that's what I do.

George
 
Would a set of Hitech 100mm ND grads not be an appropriate option? I'm guessing hte 85s will be just a tad too small?
 
Any square/rectangular format would do. Personally I use Lee. The point being that they can be used with or without a holder.
 
I use Lee stuff as well, and I'm almost sure 77mm is the largest adaptor ring they make.

We looked at a larger one but it isn't practicalas you'll get vignettingwith the super wide lenses.
 
I had the cokin p series to start with, but they wern't quite large enough if I only wanted to cover a small area (using 17-40 on 1.6 crop body) so I went to Lee filters. They are more expensive, but worth it in the long run.
 
Both Lee and Hitech have filter holders designed for UWA lenses and do threaded rings up to 105mm with thier 100mm filters range, though they are a tad expenside (Lee >> Hitech). The 85mm filters, however, have rings that stop at 77mm.
 
Filters (especially the square ones) are worth spending money on as good quality ones are going to last you for a very long time and yeild excellent results.

I personally use Lee and will happily recommend them. From what I've seen most Landscape Pros use Lees and that always seems a good omen to me. I don't have any experience of Hitech but they don't seem to have the availability that the Lees do. I have read good things about them and if you do go for Hitech would you report back on how you find them.

Incidentally, Cokin also do 100mm filters (IIRC the Z range). I personally wouldn't recomment this route not becasue they are French :razz: (that's enough in my mind) but it's because Cokin don't sell ND filters or ND grads, they actually sell Grey filters and Grey grads with different levels of light cutting ability. I had a bad experience (shared by others) with a Cokin Grey Grad where it gave a magenta colour cast in the sky, however others report that they don't have any problems.
 
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