Square or Circular ND Filters!!!

Blades Media UK

Blades Media UK

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Name
Damian
Edit My Images
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Hi all,

Straight to the point, filters... I am lost!

I quite often work with properties and cars. When I have high contrast areas I am struggling to get the finish I want. I need ND filters. I am stuck whether to go with circurlar or square, Conkin, lee or other and which version!?

I am not a landscape photographer and need it about 30% of the time so I keep thinking a variable ND like the Peter Mckinnon Polar Pro Variable ND Filter would do the job, but then you read reviews where variable are so so. However the Lee or Conkin ones aren't cheap but I don't want to buy this one and find out later I should have got that one.

What would people recommend?
 
I normally use a circular variable ND. Only issue is when you try to use it with really wide lenses and blue skies. The tiffen version ($180) is pretty much just as good as the heliopan ($450)
 
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sk66 said:
I normally use a circular variable ND. Only issue is when you try to use it with really wide lenses and blue skies. The tiffen version ($180) is pretty much just as good as the heliopan ($450)
Click to expand...

How much? Blimey.
 
If you just want to reduce light then circular filters (of appropriate quality) would be my choice. However with graduated ND filters then oblong is the way to go.
 
Blades Media UK said:
Hi all,

Straight to the point, filters... I am lost!

I quite often work with properties and cars. When I have high contrast areas I am struggling to get the finish I want. I need ND filters. I am stuck whether to go with circurlar or square, Conkin, lee or other and which version!?

I am not a landscape photographer and need it about 30% of the time so I keep thinking a variable ND like the Peter Mckinnon Polar Pro Variable ND Filter would do the job, but then you read reviews where variable are so so. However the Lee or Conkin ones aren't cheap but I don't want to buy this one and find out later I should have got that one.

What would people recommend?
Click to expand...
I think you mean Cokin filters. ;)

I'm not sure how ND filters reduce contrast. :thinking: Do you have any examples?

A Polariser filter may take the glare off some shiny surfaces to reduce contrast, but that would depend on the direction of the light to be effective.

I use circular ND and Polariser filters, as I found the square ones a bit of a faff using the holder, and trying not to break the square filters in the back pack. I don't use graduated filters so, whereas you just need to buy a different ring adapter for the filter holder for different sized lenses, you need to buy a circular filter for each lens unless you use step down rings. Thankfully I just have three lenses. :) For the Polrisers I use Hoya Pro 1's, and the ND filters are from SRB Photographic, because they seem good value for money with little or no colour cast.
 
An ND filter isn't going to do anything for high contrast. It'll just give you a longer shutter speed.

You either need to edit a well exposed shot. Or take multiple exposures and blend in some way.

A CPL is invaluable for what you shoot, car's especially.
 
I tend to use the pull down grad filters in Lightroom, but do have a Hoya Pro1 CPL for my walkaround lens.
Should use it more often really when there is a lot of glare, but usually forget I even have it with me.
 
nx4737 said:
Wouldn't a polariser be better?
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Already have one. Currently using a Hoya Digital CPL.

redhed17 said:
I think you mean Cokin filters. ;)

I'm not sure how ND filters reduce contrast. :thinking: Do you have any examples?

A Polariser filter may take the glare off some shiny surfaces to reduce contrast, but that would depend on the direction of the light to be effective.

I use circular ND and Polariser filters, as I found the square ones a bit of a faff using the holder, and trying not to break the square filters in the back pack. I don't use graduated filters so, whereas you just need to buy a different ring adapter for the filter holder for different sized lenses, you need to buy a circular filter for each lens unless you use step down rings. Thankfully I just have three lenses. :) For the Polrisers I use Hoya Pro 1's, and the ND filters are from SRB Photographic, because they seem good value for money with little or no colour cast.
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LeeRatters said:
An ND filter isn't going to do anything for high contrast. It'll just give you a longer shutter speed.

You either need to edit a well exposed shot. Or take multiple exposures and blend in some way.

A CPL is invaluable for what you shoot, car's especially.
Click to expand...

The way I understood it was that if I stop down the light it means I can increase shutter speed which would give light from the darkest areas a chance to expose whilst the white areas don't over expose, thus reducing my high contrast.

I mainly do bulk property shoots, most of them are pretty nasty and they're quick turn around so please don't judge my photography based on these images. Indoors is fine, I use a speedlite and balance the image that way, but quite often my shoots are before 11am which offers strong contrast. Here is one from yesterday.

Nikon D500
Tokina 11-16 2.8 at 11mm
Hoya Pro Digital CPL
F16
1/60
ISO 500

I went for these settings as it reduced the glare enough off the flat roof carpark to get the details in the shadows. As you can tell I worked the heck out of it in LR. Still not good enough for me, but the agents agents are happy.

My thought is that if I had an ND filter then I could reduce the glare more, turn down the shutter and get a more balanced image. Am I wrong in this way of thinking?

TalkForum.jpg
 
Blades Media UK said:
The way I understood it was that if I stop down the light it means I can increase shutter speed which would give light from the darkest areas a chance to expose whilst the white areas don't over expose, thus reducing my high contrast.

I mainly do bulk property shoots, most of them are pretty nasty and they're quick turn around so please don't judge my photography based on these images. Indoors is fine, I use a speedlite and balance the image that way, but quite often my shoots are before 11am which offers strong contrast. Here is one from yesterday.

Nikon D500
Tokina 11-16 2.8 at 11mm
Hoya Pro Digital CPL
F16
1/60
ISO 500

I went for these settings as it reduced the glare enough off the flat roof carpark to get the details in the shadows. As you can tell I worked the heck out of it in LR. Still not good enough for me, but the agents agents are happy.

My thought is that if I had an ND filter then I could reduce the glare more, turn down the shutter and get a more balanced image. Am I wrong in this way of thinking?

View attachment 255496
Click to expand...

As Lee says above an ND filter would reduce the amount of all the light entering the camera, it would just take longer to do it, the differences between the different level would remain the same. And ND filter is normally used to attain longer shutter speeds to show things moving, waves at the beach, longer lights trails at night, or even making people 'disappear' out of a scene if the exposure is long enough and they keep moving. ;)

The Polariser may take the glare off shiny surfaces, leaves, the tarmac in your images, but that is dependent on the direction of the light, with the most effect being if the light source is at 90 degrees to you and your subject left or right. As the light source moves behind or in front of you the effect is reduced until it may have no effect at all. You can normally see if it is having an effect or not in the viewfinder, and if it isn't, take it off because it is just reducing the light entering camera which could make you raise the ISO when it may not need to. The best quality images (less noise) are at ISO 100 on the D500.

If you had the camera on a tripod for the image above you could have used ISO 100 and potentially had a little less noise, and had a shutter speed of about 1/10th sec. The D500 is very good at ISO 500, but boosting the shadows that much could emphasize any noise that is there, and the larger the change, the more problems may show up. A longer shutter speed from a lower ISO may have exaggerated any movement of the trees, but if you are considering ND filters I assume that isn't important.

Hope that helps and makes sense. And apologies if you knew any of that already, though from the initial query, I'm not sure you had it clear how ND filters work.

Well done for getting some work taking pics though. ;) (y)
 
Thanks for the help. Yeah, I knew they would darken the image and slow things down for motion blur uses. As said above I thought it could be used to resolve the issues of too much light and not enough in the darks. I wanted to try and get way from the reliance of photoshop/lightroom and try and get a better picture in camera first.

I gave HDR another go on a few images and blending and it just wasn't worth the time pay off and the quality wasn't any better.

I did buy a variable ND for filming. Went for a Hama model, £35. Ranked 5th against a few very expensive models.
 
Sometimes I expose for the light areas then plus exposure compensation, an example would be point the camera up to have to more of the sky in the frame, lock the exposure in recompose and add compensation, may work for you but no expert
 
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