ND Grad filters

Hi,

I want to buy some ND grad filter (cokin or equivalent). I can see that they have many of them: soft/hard and different ND.

I dont have any for now, which one / ones should I get or buy first?

Is the P series good for 10d + 17-40L? or would there be vigneting?

thanks a lot
Joachim

I use the Cokin P series holder with HiTech ND grads on my 17-40L and they work fine, no vignetting at all. I bought a set consisting of 2 & 3 stop soft edge and 2 & 3 stop hard edge. I find I use the 3 stop filters most often. Soft edge vs hard edge varies depending on the scene being photographed.
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Equipment list in profile.
http://www.pbase.com/digifan

I have use the Tiffen 77mm .6 Grad ND filter on my 17-40L. I have been very happy with the results.

I use them in circumstances where I have a fairly well define horizontal break between a bright sky and a darker area below. This allows me to get a more even exposure across the picture top to bottom. The alternative was blow out the sky - losing clounds, etc. ... or underexpose the bottom half and lose all the detail in darkness.

• Peter

JoachimT said:

Hi,
I want to buy some ND grad filter (cokin or equivalent). I can see
that they have many of them: soft/hard and different ND.

I dont have any for now, which one / ones should I get or buy first?

Is the P series good for 10d + 17-40L? or would there be vigneting?

thanks a lot
Joachim

Click to expand...

Also aperture will impact the "softness" of the edge. The smaller the aperture the "harder" the edge will be. As a result, a hard edge when used fairly open will be substantially softer.

Steven

auroraproject said:

I use the Cokin P series holder with HiTech ND grads on my 17-40L
and they work fine, no vignetting at all. I bought a set consisting
of 2 & 3 stop soft edge and 2 & 3 stop hard edge. I find I use the
3 stop filters most often. Soft edge vs hard edge varies depending
on the scene being photographed.
--
Equipment list in profile.
http://www.pbase.com/digifan

Click to expand...

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New and Updated!!!
http://www.pbase.com/snoyes/image_a_week

I know the question is about ND graduated filters, but with digital, I now just do an exposure that I like for both (sky/foreground), and blend them in Photoshop. I like that I can do this quicker in the field, and don't worry about filter issues (flare, the softess of the "line", etc.). Try it if you like....

Mark

pmelsa said:

I use them in circumstances where I have a fairly well define
horizontal break between a bright sky and a darker area below. This
allows me to get a more even exposure across the picture top to
bottom. The alternative was blow out the sky - losing clounds, etc.
... or underexpose the bottom half and lose all the detail in
darkness.

• Peter

JoachimT said:

Hi,
I want to buy some ND grad filter (cokin or equivalent). I can see
that they have many of them: soft/hard and different ND.

I dont have any for now, which one / ones should I get or buy first?

Is the P series good for 10d + 17-40L? or would there be vigneting?

thanks a lot
Joachim

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I'm with Mark on this one -- PS over filters.

However, it's not that expensive to experiment with a Cokin "P" ND grad like the 2-stop "P121" model. The chief complaint about these is that they leave a slight color cast. Later, if you decide to get something better, you can get more expensive filters to fit the Cokin holder (it's the de-facto standard). If you want a really cheap experiment, you can get away with handholding the filter in front of your tripod-mounted camera.

I would think that shooting RAW one could expose for the detail in the sky and later when converting the RAW file develop one for the sky and the other for the foreground detail.

Anyway, can you explain how you blend the two images in PhotoShop? Do yoiu have any examples, preferably with the two photos and the blended results?

Thanks
-tourist

MarkMcCombs said:

Mark

pmelsa said:

I use them in circumstances where I have a fairly well define
horizontal break between a bright sky and a darker area below. This
allows me to get a more even exposure across the picture top to
bottom. The alternative was blow out the sky - losing clounds, etc.
... or underexpose the bottom half and lose all the detail in
darkness.

• Peter

JoachimT said:

Hi,
I want to buy some ND grad filter (cokin or equivalent). I can see
that they have many of them: soft/hard and different ND.

I dont have any for now, which one / ones should I get or buy first?

Is the P series good for 10d + 17-40L? or would there be vigneting?

thanks a lot
Joachim

Click to expand...

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Tha Cokin GND filters are not strictly neutral. They do impart a slight greyish tint to the scene. For that reason they're not called GND filters but rather Gradual Grey. Their full ND filters are neutral; however. HiTec make a good quality filter at a reasonable price for the Cokin system.

If you want to do it in PS, it's not even a matter of taking two exposures. You can add a new layer, fill it with a gradient of 50% grey, then adjust Fill, Opacity and Blending Mode to suit your taste. Works well. What it comes down to is how much you're concerned about getting as close to right in camera and how much you're willing to do later on.

JoachimT said:

Hi,
I want to buy some ND grad filter (cokin or equivalent). I can see
that they have many of them: soft/hard and different ND.

I dont have any for now, which one / ones should I get or buy first?

Is the P series good for 10d + 17-40L? or would there be vigneting?

thanks a lot
Joachim

Click to expand...

digitaltourist said:

I would think that shooting RAW one could expose for the detail in
the sky and later when converting the RAW file develop one for the
sky and the other for the foreground detail.

Click to expand...

I suppose you could do that, IF the chip holds some detail in both highlights and shadows. I'd prefer to get proper exposure for each one, it looks more natural.

The other problem I've seen with this, is that if you expose for the highlights/sky, you can pull detail out of the deep shadows, but there won't be many levels of color there, and maybe not much natural color at all (I've seen the shadows look like they are greyscale, vs. RGB). Most of the info (levels of color) in a digital photo is in the mid-tones and highlights, with only about 256 levels in the shadows, vs. over 2000 in each zone of the right side of a histogram.

digitaltourist said:

Anyway, can you explain how you blend the two images in PhotoShop?
Do yoiu have any examples, preferably with the two photos and the
blended results?

Click to expand...

Like everything else in PS, there's a mulititude of ways to do it, none more correct than the other. Take for instance, a dull, or white, sky. Select (using selection tools, I like the Pen tool, but it's takes practice, I also use .5 pixel dithering with this tool) the sky in the pic that holds no detail there, Save that Selection, open the pic that does hold detail in that area, Load the selection, and Copy that. Then in the other pic, do a Paste Into and you have it. You'll likely have some general clean-up to do.

I don't have samples as I never thought I'd need to demonstrate it.

Good luck,

Mark

digitaltourist said:

Thanks
-tourist

MarkMcCombs said:

Mark

pmelsa said:

I use them in circumstances where I have a fairly well define
horizontal break between a bright sky and a darker area below. This
allows me to get a more even exposure across the picture top to
bottom. The alternative was blow out the sky - losing clounds, etc.
... or underexpose the bottom half and lose all the detail in
darkness.

• Peter

JoachimT said:

Hi,
I want to buy some ND grad filter (cokin or equivalent). I can see
that they have many of them: soft/hard and different ND.

I dont have any for now, which one / ones should I get or buy first?

Is the P series good for 10d + 17-40L? or would there be vigneting?

thanks a lot
Joachim

Click to expand...

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