Which Lee grads do i choose?

[SoDoSoPa]

Hello, I am fairly new to DSLR photography, I'm looking to buy a filter system but i'm a bit confused what sort of grads should i buy.

I am looking at the Lee filter system and am considering getting there soft grad filter set as these seem the most popular and the hard grads are quite new.

From what i've read i should be looking at getting hard grads as these are supposed to be easier to use and are quite forgiving? Is this true for all filters Lee, Hitech, Cokin?

I mainly just wanna use them for landscape photography, Maybe someone here with a bit of experience with these filters can point me in the right direction i dont wanna get it wrong as its quite expensive for these filters.

Thanks in advance Gordon

 

[GeordieLass]

I've only recently got my filters but if you've got a cropped frame sensor, go for hard. I've got hard and soft grad filters and you can only really notice the transition at all with the hard ones as the transition on the soft is so wide. Certainly been using the hard more so far.

 

[TCR4x4]

I'd go for hard, much more usefull. I only have soft at the moment, and certainly miss the hards.
The softs graduation is too big, and the actual level of ND is only at the very top as opposed to all the way to the cut off on the hards.

 

[strax]

Hard grads aren't that useful when there are hills on the horizon, too easily noticeable for the gradations. I find a soft grad much more useful even on a dx sensor

 

[wavefront]

I'm the opposite and I'd go for soft grads, and don't miss the hard types even when doing seascapes. I find hard edge filters impossible on landscapes - way too much change over small distance. Plenty of ways to get all the variations you need by stacking the soft filters ontop of each other and varying the overlap, or even using the filter 'inverted' to get a harder line. Also if you use lightroom, the digi grads also work very well if you're just after toning an image.

Another consideration is I hardly use my 0.3, so maybe get a (assuming you were getting a 3 filter set) 0.6 soft, 0.9 soft and a 0.6 hard. Best of both worlds?

Mark.