To Grad, or not to Grad, hard or soft graduated filters!

antc

antc

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Anthony
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Hi guys,

Apologies for the thread title, couldn't think of anything better lol!

Anyway, what I am basically asking is this. How many of you guys and girls use graduated ND filters, hard or soft? Or, how many of you don't bother with them and just add them in post, in LR or PS or whatever your chosen editing app maybe.

Myself and a few friends were having this discussion earlier today, and it seems there are a fair few opinions floating around. Some are of the thought its better to get it right in camera, by using said filters and then this means less time in post. Others think its easy to add the effect in post and therefore it saves them money not having to buy the filters in the first place.

Of course, there are some filter effects you cannot add after the photo has been taken, such as those created when using a polariser, or a 10 stop filters etc.......but my question is mainly for ND grads.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
 
Hi antc,

I use the Lee filter system with a range of filters. Hard/soft graduated and neutral. Also happen to have the Big Stopper.

The reason that I feel it is more effective to use a filter on my camera than adding a filter in PP is that I might well lose a lot of information that won't then be available for PP.

I recommend that you look at the Lee videos on their site to gain a better understanding then post any questions you may have :)

http://www.leefilters.com/
 
One reason for an ND grad is to prevent the sky blowing out when shooting a scene with darker land in the frame too. The dynamic range of most sensors can't handle really high contrast scenes so you end up losing all highlight detail from the sky. No amount of digital grads in Lightroom will bring back detail that isn't there.
 
I hardly ever use grads and one reason is that few things have a straight line demarcating light and dark. I suppose the obvious use would be a seascape with a bright sky. I think mine are soft but it's a long time since I even looked at them. ND's are much more useful for me.
 
Well the reason for my question is that I am re buying a larger sized set of nd grads, and in the past I have always had both, and found myself using soft rather than hard. But, I have always found soft hard to get the placement right.

Also I have spoken with the guys at Robert White for some advice and they have stated that 90% of people go with hard grads. I always thought if you had stuff poking through the horizon line such as buildings of trees a soft grad was batter, as a hard grad would leave a noticeable line through the item or make the top of it dark and leave the bottom of it light?

Hope that makes some kind of sense.
 
antc said:
Also I have spoken with the guys at Robert White for some advice and they have stated that 90% of people go with hard grads. I always thought if you had stuff poking through the horizon line such as buildings of trees a soft grad was batter, as a hard grad would leave a noticeable line through the item or make the top of it dark and leave the bottom of it light?

Hope that makes some kind of sense.
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Its completely dependent on the scene you're shooting. I have over the past few months acquired a set of both hard and soft edge and even a reverse grad. Typically, I'll use the hard for a straight horizon and a soft for everything else, but as I said it is subject dependent, you really need to experiment in order to decide what to use.
 
antc said:
Hi guys,

Apologies for the thread title, couldn't think of anything better lol!

Anyway, what I am basically asking is this. How many of you guys and girls use graduated ND filters, hard or soft? Or, how many of you don't bother with them and just add them in post, in LR or PS or whatever your chosen editing app maybe.
Click to expand...

FWIW - I still use Photoshop HDR and I still as using grads - its pretty much scene dependent that you'll need to experiment with.
 
Grads are a waste of money and a waste of time at the shooting stage for me, for anything but a level horizon that is (so usually the sea) - even then I don't bother as... a) I haven't got any, and b) its too much faffing about wasting shooting time

Others swear by them, each to their own :)

Dave
 
NeilA1975 said:
Its completely dependent on the scene you're shooting. I have over the past few months acquired a set of both hard and soft edge and even a reverse grad. Typically, I'll use the hard for a straight horizon and a soft for everything else, but as I said it is subject dependent, you really need to experiment in order to decide what to use.
Click to expand...

Here's what Is shot on Saturday using a 0.9 (3 stop) Hitech SE grad. I tried a hard edge but it's placement was obvious.

Using PP to the same effect would have meant a lot of faffing with a non guaranteed result.
It literally took 1 min to set this up, not even that probably.

Herringfleet Dawn Mono (Explored) by neil almond, on Flickr
 
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So how did you prevent the Grad having an effect on the windmill ???

I know you say only 1 min to position it, but if you then bob up a bit or down a bit you're constantly having to reposition the Grad - that's "faffing" I'd rather do without - and I can assure you I can wholly guarantee the result of my faffing in PP ;)

My most common landscape image has mountains in it, aside from flat ones (not many of those) the Grad would always be affecting areas where its not wanted, so 'faffing' is needed in Photoshop to remove the Grad's effect; and pretty much to the same degree as just using a HDR DNG, Luminosity Masking (which would be perfect for windmills), or even just working on a 16-bit raw file in most most DSLRs where the DR is huge now anyway when the Sun isn't in shot

Dave
 
DG Phototraining said:
So how did you prevent the Grad having an effect on the windmill ???

I know you say only 1 min to position it, but if you then bob up a bit or down a bit you're constantly having to reposition the Grad - that's "faffing" I'd rather do without - and I can assure you I can wholly guarantee the result of my faffing in PP ;)

My most common landscape image has mountains in it, aside from flat ones (not many of those) the Grad would always be affecting areas where its not wanted, so 'faffing' is needed in Photoshop to remove the Grad's effect; and pretty much to the same degree as just using a HDR DNG, Luminosity Masking (which would be perfect for windmills), or even just working on a 16-bit raw file in most most DSLRs where the DR is huge now anyway when the Sun isn't in shot

Dave
Click to expand...

No I said 1 minute to set it up - that is fitting the adaptor and positioning the grad,
As for the windmill, a local targeted adjustment - took probably no longer than 30 seconds as the grad wasn't impacting it that much.
Ultimately the less pixel manipulation you do the cleaner the image.
 
Steve-T said:
I have Grads but rarely use them these days preferring multiple exposure luminosity masking or layer mask and hand edit. Quick and easy once you become familiar with the technique.
Click to expand...

I tried layer masking - couldn't warm to it with all the faffing. For multiple exposures, I use 32 bit HDR within PS CC, which by comparison, I found to be a much easier process.
 
hard vs soft will change depending on your focal length and sensor size.

Mind, I was always told to use hard edge for horizons no matter their shape and soft edge for balancing a scene left to right.

If you look at the Lee Inspiring Professionals book you see plenty of pro's using hard edges cutting through mountains etc. One that springs to mind is Mark Denton's shot in that book of Canary wharf.
 
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I use grads 90% of the time! 85% of that is soft grads! Hardly use hard
 
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Great feedback so far. I have gone with some soft grads. I watched a few of the LEE videos and some more research thats what I have gone with. Have enjoyed reading through the comments in this thread though, just goes to show there are lots of different ways of doing things.

I am more of the opinion myself I would rather get it right in camera, which means I can spend less time in front of the computer and more time out shooting with the camera.
 
I use lee Seven5 system. I do generally avoid using them if I can since they are a pain to faff around with when the moment is passing before your eyes! I have a 3 stop soft and a 2 stop hard, soft are most useful unless you are going to be ultra boring and shoot a blank seascape with no foreground features. I'd like to add a 2 stop soft as that seems to fit better with the Fuji's dynamic range than the 3 stop which is generally overkill.

It's definitely better to get right in camera, even if the dynamic range can technically be accommodated by your camera, fannying about with curves and shadows adjustment to get it all looking right without introducing noise, halos or just plain nasty tones is a real challenge.

I was out in the rain the other day, and managed to get the grads out for one shot between showers, which turned out infinitely better than all the others which had to be edited to take into account the underexposure necessary to keep the sky in.
 
I don't get how using grads are too much faffing about....? It's takes hardly no time at all & if I'm photographing sunset at a local beach for example I'll spend most of my time sat chilling with a beer, chatting & waiting for the right time/light/tide. I'm certainly not wasting shooting time there unless I want to come home with 150 shots from the same beach of similar scenes ;)

I'm more than happy to faff about & come home with 2 or 3 really good, well set up shots that require limited PP :)

Each to there own of course ;)
 
LeeRatters said:
I don't get how using grads are too much faffing about....? It's takes hardly no time at all & if I'm photographing sunset at a local beach for example I'll spend most of my time sat chilling with a beer, chatting & waiting for the right time/light/tide. I'm certainly not wasting shooting time there unless I want to come home with 150 shots from the same beach of similar scenes ;)

I'm more than happy to faff about & come home with 2 or 3 really good, well set up shots that require limited PP :)

Each to there own of course ;)
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Hear hear! Exactly how I see it..... I sit and enjoy the peace and tranquility ! And watch it develop!
 
Couldn't agree more chaps. I don't need 150 shots of the same thing, a couple of really great ones, right light, cloud formation etc etc with little p/p afterwards is just how I like it.
 
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