X-A1 ND Filters question

Teodor87 wrote:

Hello, I'm eager to receive my X-A1, that should be delivered by Jan 22nd. Meanwhile i am looking to buy some accessories and filters (ND).

I see many 58mm filters for sale on ebay but i am not sure what their quality is. What good quality non-fuji filters would you recommend(if any)? I don't want to spend ~$70 on a filter

Cheap generic ND filters are ok if you're just starting out and not sure if you're going to be using them much. They will let you experiment and see if you're into that style of photography. I think ryan2007 has mentioned going for multicoating which is good advice but the biggest problem with cheap ND filters is not light scattering but colour cast. Here are some examples....

NB i bought 3 ND filters (ND2, ND4 and ND8) which equate to a 1, 2 and 3 stop reduction in light and the set cost about $8-$10 on ebay (free delivery)

The following is an extreme example where I stacked 2 of the cheap filters together to get the slow shutter speed that I needed to affect how the fountain and flags looked.

ND8 plus ND4 stacked together to get 5stop reduction in shutter speed

You can see the terrible pink/purple colour cast. Normally it's not that bad but a combination of stacking two filters and long exposure has exacerbated the problem. The same shot with quick conversion to black and white looks as follows.

I've been playing with these cheap ND filters for about a year now and I found that if you don't stack them, keep the exposure short or convert to black and white then you can get some reasonable shots. Note that they do slightly affect the sharpness of images so you'll need to do extra post processing on top of dealing with colour cast.

PS. I've really enjoyed the long exposure style (5-60 second exposures) and can only achieve this with 5 or more stop reduction in light so I've splurged on a set of 3 Haida filters (ND8, ND64 and ND1000) that equate to 3, 6 and 10 stop reduction in light. The set cost me $150 and from the quick test with the ND1000 (60 sec exposure of crap on my desk) I can't see much of a colour cast so that's good for me. Looking forward to using them out "in the field"