Variable ND filter

[CaveDweller]

Are these any good? I was thinking of getting one for my two old OM lenses as in strong sunlight they are unusable with my EPL-1 (I have an OM-m4/3 adapter). Even with the ISO set to 100, 2000 shutter speed, f/16 on the 50mm prime and f/22 on the 80-200 telephoto everything is still overexposed in strong sunlight. I thought the vairable ND filter would save the hassel of buying loads of seperate ones. obviously I don't have the problem with the origional lens for the PEN.

I even thought about getting the square slide in filters but with my lens diameters ranging from 40.5mm to 55mm I'm guessing I would have to get all sorts of adapter rings?

Thanks in advance,

Paul.

 

[HoppyUK]

Are these any good? I was thinking of getting one for my two old OM lenses as in strong sunlight they are unusable with my EPL-1 (I have an OM-m4/3 adapter). Even with the ISO set to 100, 2000 shutter speed, f/16 on the 50mm prime and f/22 on the 80-200 telephoto everything is still overexposed in strong sunlight. I thought the vairable ND filter would save the hassel of buying loads of seperate ones. obviously I don't have the problem with the origional lens for the PEN.

I even thought about getting the square slide in filters but with my lens diameters ranging from 40.5mm to 55mm I'm guessing I would have to get all sorts of adapter rings?

Thanks in advance,

Paul.

It sounds like something's wrong, maybe the adapter isn't working properly and is not stopping the lens down. For example, there's an exposure guide called Sunny 16 that says in bright noon day sun your shutter speed will equal the ISO at f/16. So it doesn't get any brighter than 1/100sec at f/16 ISO 100, unless you're pointing the camera at the sky or something.

Check the lens is closing down properly first, but vari-NDs are generally not great and can be very poor with wide-angles at higher density settings.

 

[CaveDweller]

It sounds like something's wrong, maybe the adapter isn't working properly and is not stopping the lens down. For example, there's an exposure guide called Sunny 16 that says in bright noon day sun your shutter speed will equal the ISO at f/16. So it doesn't get any brighter than 1/100sec at f/16 ISO 100, unless you're pointing the camera at the sky or something.

Check the lens is closing down properly first, but vari-NDs are generally not great and can be very poor with wide-angles at higher density settings.

Thanks for the tip. I will try that first. If it comes to it and I do need the ND filters I will avoid the variable ones and just get a few normal ones for both lenses aswell.

 

[Nod]

As a general rule, especially when it comes to filters, you tend to get what you pay for, although there is a price point above which, the benefits of the extra spend are marginal. In the world of square filters, IIRC, Cokin are the cheapest (and their older grey/NDs used to give a slight magenta colour cast), Hi Tech are next up (and seem to come quite well recommended as a relatively budget alternative to...) Lee filters which seem to be among the best but with a price tag to match.

A small selection of adaptor rings for a square filter system will be cheaper than a small collection of screw in NDs, although you could just get NDs to fit your widest diameter thread and use stepping rings to adapt them to smaller threads. That makes using hoods difficult, while clip on hoods are available for most square systems. If you're going to get into ND grads, a square system is the only real logical solution - you can slide the filter up and down to suit your composition, rather than have the composition dictated by the grad's position.