What filters do you use (Square)

ecoleman

ecoleman

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Elliott
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I'm looking to invest in some good filters but it seems that getting one of everything will cost a small mortgage.

I've been doing quite a bit of reading and many suggest not bothering with soft grads and other suggest leaving out the 0.3 and 0.6.

I'm looking to get some ND grads (for skys) and ND (for water etc) plus holder and would also like to play with a 10x.
I'm happy to pay for Lee but it seems they are not able to meet demand at the moment. Hitechs seems to get some good reviews as well.

All in all I'm a bit confused as to what to get. I don't make money from photography, it's purely a hobby so don't want to waste money on filters I'll never use.

So my questions is what filters do you use the most (in terms of ND and ND Grad, Soft / Hard)? What do you regret buying because it never comes out of your bag?
If you use Hitechs. how do you rate them?
 
I have (had) Lee 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 grads soft and hard.

I never used the 0.3's, so sold them. I then found mysef never using the softs al all, so sold them all.

I now just have a 0.6 and 0.9 hard, plus I recently bought a Hitech prostop IRND 10 stopper, as the waiting list for the Lee is rediculous.

Ive had a lee big stoppr in the past, and they are excelent, however made of glass so very wasy to break. The colour cast was a light blue.

The hitech is resin, and I havent yet detected any colour cast, although it does seem to flare more. The gasket doesnt seem to quite fit the holder, so there is a little light leak sometimes. I keep meaning to contact hitech, as they state in the manual they will send more gasket stuff if you want it.
 
Stay clear of cokin, they have a terrible magenta cast, especially if stacked.
Don't discount the screw in types. I have a 77mm that's useful
 
Well Lee is good, having said that I have Hitech 0,3, 0.6 and 0.9 which I use with a Lee holder and I can't really fault them. I don't use soft either for the 77mm lenses or the big 14-24, which I have a 0.9 Lee for.
Apart from that I have a Heliopan CPL-PL and a Lee Big Stopper
 
I used to have a hitech 10 stop - it had quite a noticeable blue cast


hitech 10 stop blue cast by damianmkv, on Flickr

But can be easily corrected in PP


miller's crossing by damianmkv, on Flickr

For me, there was quite a lot of light leak on the 10 stop so I changed to Lee ( which I didn't use and so sold :) ). Hitech grads were fine for me but I'm slowly upgrading to Lee.
 
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Byker28i said:
Stay clear of cokin, they have a terrible magenta cast, especially if stacked.
Click to expand...

I keep reading this and when I do I think I must be lucky...

I bought my Cokin filters over a period of time so they can't all be part of a "good" batch and I've never had any trouble with colour casts.
 
I have Lee 0.3, 0.6, 0.9 soft grads, Big stopper, and a Hitech 3 stop ND.

I find the big stopper fine, far less cast than I had with the hitech Prostop (10 stopper) I had. Big stopper on the left, prostop on the right, both with same "Daylight" white balance.

Screen%20Shot%202013-06-28%20at%2000.57.50.jpg
 
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I've got Lee, 1,2,3 stops in both hard and soft edge, Cokin 3 stop ND, Big Stopper and Hitech 3 stop reverse ND grad.

Of all of those the 3 stop hard edge is my most often used. The Cokin gets quite a bit of use too, it's slight warming cast is nice at sunset. The reverse grad I also find useful for sunrise and sunset, and occasionally inverted for night shots where a band of lights (a coast for example) would cause issues when trying to capture the night sky.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

Think I'l go with 0.6 and 0.9 hard grad and 0.9 and 10X ND to start with.
Just need to decide if it will be Lee or Hitech as I can't seem to find Lee anywhere :(
I doubt I'll be taking 100's of shots with the filters so a bit of PP to remove some colour cast is not a major problem.

Anybody know who has Lee in stock ?
 
i find it i use 0.6 and 0.9 ND more and use hard grad as well but sometimes the soft grad as well.

Also i use the 10 stopper alot too.
 
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