The workshop will kick off with 3 nights in the Namib Rand on the 16th of March. After that we’ll head South to the Fish River Canyon for 2 nights and then finish off with 3 nights at Sossusvlei.

Dates: 16-24 March 2013

Cost: R24950.00 pp sharing

Single Supplement: R3200.00

To book or enquire about more info, simply send me a mail at hougaard@hougaardmalan.com or call me on 0762792202

Close outside the Sossusvlei Lodge

Fish River Canyon

The Namib Rand

Deadvlei

Images and story by Dom Wills – Check out his Deviantart page to see more.

“After an early evening of looking at some stars at the campsite at Sesriem, I was a bit shocked to be awoken a few hours later by thunder and rain. Being in the Namib Desert, I thought it would be temporary storm and move on. I was wrong. It rained solidly for 2 days.

I took periodic trips to Deadvlei to see how much, if any, water was landing on the pan. On the second morning, I was one of the first to the 4×2 parking lot and the road to deadvlei was flooded. Other cars had parked and were waiting for guides to help them get through. I knew that the river was going to come down in flood at any time, so I lowered tyre pressures and pressed on.

I though there would be the odd puddle at deadvlei at the most, but as I walked over the dune, I was delighted to see there was loads of water pooled up in large puddles all over the vlei. Given the river flooding situation, I gave myself an hour before heading back. What a glorious solo hour in this iconic landscape.

When I got back to the 4×2 parking lot, the rangers had blocked access to the vlei – suppose timing is everything and sometimes early mornings do pay off.”

The Day Before. Dramatic sandlip kicked up by the impending storm...

Wind being blown across the pan the day before

At this point one starts getting to the nice trees in the pan

Dom said that instead of running around and trying to get a shot of all the trees, he focused on getting one or two good shots.

My favorite shot from his series

Spitzkoppe under a stormy afternoon sky

My first destination was the famous Spitzkoppe mountains, a spine of granite mountain peaks protruding from a plateau like a set of jagged teeth. It’s one of the most iconic landscapes in Namibia and I had 6 nights to try and do it some photographic justice. The weather forecast looked good: rain showers most afternoons. After arriving and setting up camp I spent the most of the first day just exploring the location for potential compositions. Photos of Spitzkoppe are very common in all tourism related media of Namibia and I thought I had seen most angles of the place. Upon some exploration I was surprised at the vast amount of possible foregrounds and compositions dotted around the main mountains. Iconic arch apart, there were so many rock pools, rock patterns, grass fields, trees, boulders etc. that I was very confused about where to start.

Interesting play of light and shadow created as the last sunlight fades from the lower part of the arch

I decided to kick off with the iconic arch shots, and then move on to something more unique. After 4 days I had gotten a satisfying amount of material of the location and while I never got a proper storm at sunset, I certainly couldn’t complain about the light I had. For a first visit to the place I was very happy and I decided to head to the coast for a well-deserved break from climbing up and down granite ‘hills’. I had four days to kill before the C4 workshop kicked off in the Rand and I thought I’d make a decision on where to go over a cold drink and the sound of the waves in Henties Bay. While there I made the decision that while I don’t really want typical photos of Sossus- and Deadvlei, for business reasons it was a necessity in my portfolio.

Cliche Deadvlei

I spent three days at Sesriem, but I still don’t have any stories of revelation or inspiration about the place. I had one good sunset and one good sunrise so I got the shots I wanted. I already knew all the typical wide angle compositions at Deadvlei so it was simply a matter of moving the tripod around and getting the shots. The one morning we arrived to find a British group of about 15 photographers already shooting. ‘We’ were another 4, and as the sun climbed I think about another 10 arrived. There were more tripods than trees and it was impossible to get a shot without someone in it. Luckily the skies were cloudless so I had a nap on the side of the pan while the masses bustled about in each other’s compositions. It’s a place that still fails to touch me, or maybe I fail to connect with it??

The mist cleared for a few minutes, allowing soft light through slatted ceilings

The next 7 days followed with the C4 workshop of which 4 days were on the farm Excelsior in the Namib Rand and 3 days were at Sossusvlei. The weather was good and we had very flexible hours at Sossusvlei which allowed our clients to get some great photos. The strenuous hours and long walks were a bit of a shock to some of the clients, but they quickly adapted to the desert! We had a good rest on the last morning and spent the last night well into darkness shooting stars in deadvlei. The group tried a few static milky way shots with light painted trees and ended things with a 32 minute star trail exposure that came out brilliant. I ached to get the night sky photos myself, but I’ll return at a later stage to attempt something unique.

Ghost rain lights up in flaming sunset light

After the workshop, I and a client traveled on to the ghost town of Kolmanskop, a location that was a complete block to me last year. It was a bucket list location for Jill and I think her ambition to get great shots influenced me to give it another proper try after failing so miserably last year. I studied a few images of Kolmanskop in the run-up to my trip and learnt quite a few things from them. Armed with this new knowledge, me and Jill were psyched to shoot the iconic ghost town. On both mornings conditions were very misty which not only cast beautiful soft light into the buildings, but kept things pleasantly cool. Without really noticing it, we shot nonstop for 5 hours on the first morning and the second morning went similar. After those two days we were both very satisfied with our results and it was time to carry on to Fish River Canyon.

Rain falls over the Nubib mountains beyond the plains of Dina

The Fish River Lodge is definitely my favorite lodge in Namibia. Everything from the location to the service to the architecture is astounding and I often end up just relaxing more than shooting. As with the rest of the trip, the weather wasn’t amazing, but it certainly wasn’t bad. I got some new photos to go home with. The potential of the place is however much greater than I’ve ever seen in any photo, but you need a pretty rare synchronization of weather elements to get killer light over the canyon at the right time.

15 degree winter weather at Luderitz was a welcome relief from 40+ degree days at Sossusvlei

It was a successful three weeks, but I’d be lying if I said it was as special as last year. Most places were definitely easier to shoot after having been there before, but then they were also less exciting. I can’t wait to get back next year and experience the place again. The magic of Namibia never fails to refresh the mind and satisfy one’s craving for excellent photography. Even when I say that it wasn’t as special, you can see from the photos that it was still an absolute feast of top class photographic opportunities…and this is about 1/5th of the work I’ve deemed worthy of being processed to go into my portfolio.

Excelsior's chocolate mountain below a dramatic afternoon sky

2013 workshops

Bookings will open in the coming weeks and there will be a slight variation on last year. The one workshop will be 4 days Namib Rand, 2 days Fish River Canyon, 2 days Sossusvlei and on the other date Fish River Canyon will be substituted for Kolmanskop/Luderitz. Both will be in March next year and the price will be roughly R20000-R25000 ($3000-$4000) with about 15 places available between the two. Watch this space!

Beautiful side lighting from a window brings out the ripples in the sand

Photograph Namibia Guides

These have both been removed from my blog. I am in the process of turning them into e-books which will be much more content rich and precise and available for purchase at a small price.

Afternoon sunlight on the Fish River Canyon

Nikon has now taken the lead with its 36mp D800, but it wasn’t willing to compete in the pixel race with the model that won it the global sports and journalism market?? They’ve  increased the resolution of the D700 by 1.73x, while upping the resolution of the D3 only by 1.22x. There are obviously the speed, focus and noise areas where the D4 needs to perform much better than the D800, but looking at this fact I suspect the D800 is a confident throw of the dice to try and get their foot in a market that is dominated by the 5DmkII. I may have stuck faithfully to Canon over the past 3 years, but the way in which they compromise IQ for specs that sell cameras really pissed me off. The companies obviously just want to make money, but it’s insulting when they sacrifice the performance of their cameras for high pixel-counts that appeal to the Tom, Dick and Harrys that don’t know squat about resolution.

It’s been proven time and time again through many models from every brand that the higher the pixel density, the worse the image quality gets.  Nikon faithfully stood by this knowledge and produced cameras with low resolution, great speed and focus that resulted in a great overall camera. Apart from the 1Ds III and 5D II, I can’t say I ever desired one of the non FF Canon cameras. The 1DmkIV was killed on launch by the D3s. The 7D’s pixel density was more than twice that of the 5DmkII and while its IQ did surprise me, it was a very useless 18mp.

Now it seems that Canon has taken the lessons it learned from those over-rezzed models and applied it in the development of what I hope will finally be their comeback from the knock that they’ve taken from Nikon over the past 4 years? They’ve been surviving off the consumer market and the 5D II. The money may be in the consumer market, but it’s the pros that build your reputation and 3 years ago it was like Canon pro bodies were Polish Jews all taken to Auschwitz under the rule of the D3.

Rape Victim of the D3s

Enough speculation, there are solid facts to look at.

22.3mp – I’ve had 21mp for 3 years now and I honestly can’t say I want more unless it’s on a larger format. In what situation will you truly benefit from 7-8mp more? I’m still very doubtful of whether Nikon’s new technology can truly pull out that much detail from a 35mm format lens, BUT, if the D800 can prove me wrong then I’ll get in my car and go buy one.

New AF system – I focus manually most of the time using Live View because you can zoom in 10 times to any part of the frame and make sure focus is dead on. I do however shoot on AF when shooting handheld and I know the focus isn’t reliable, so while it’s not a make or break issue it is a useful improvement for me.

Light metering, video functions and higher fps don’t really tickle my fancy, but it has all been considerably improved.

Improved Weather resistance – After a year of risky seascape shooting and one final wave giving me a sunset shower, my 5D II kicked the bucket. Upon analysis it was constant exposure to sea air and water that corroded the circuit boards around the buttons, so improved weather sealing is very welcome.

New sensor cleaning – They’ve added something at the bottom of the shutter box that absorbs the dust after it has been shaken from the sensor? I’d love to get a better understanding of how this works. All I know is that everyone HATES dust!

Larger, better LCD – Always welcome.

New HDR function – In camera HDR processing…I don’t want to say much about this, but I suspect the results to be very photomatix-like. I’ll wait and see.

Multiple Exposure Function – This I’m very excited for…Something you could do in the film days to create very interesting results. If you don’t know the potential of this then you don’t deserve to get excited about it!

If you go read the page on Canon’s website you’ll see that there are many other cool new functions like comparative playback, in camera processing, variable aspect rations…the list goes on!

100-25600 Native ISO range – Canon says that newly designed photodiodes, a better signal to noise ratio and improved image processing has upped noise performance by two stops. To most people that doesn’t mean much, but for landscapers wishing to go to the night skies it means a lot. I’ve always shot at 3200, which is good enough for web viewing but I wouldn’t print it. Two stops more will mean you can print ISO3200 files and you can shoot at ISO12800. Imagine this…pitch black wilderness sky, a milkyway so bright it casts a shadow under a Namibian tree…ISO12800, 30s, f/2.8. To say that the thought of that gets me very excited is an understatement. If you use a 24mm f/1.4 lens you can get another two stops, and if you’ve got a 1Dx (100-51200 native range) then you’ve got another stop. I’m confident that these new cameras are about to open one massive door to night sky photography and that is the thing I’m most excited about.

Conclusion

I’m going to try and type my conclusion  as short  as possible without elaborating on points. I would love to hear people’s arguments for or against certain things.

Megapixels – I don’t think that on the medium term the way forward for 35mm cameras is resolution. Even the sharpest lens can only project so much detail in a 36x24mm area and Nikon has gone upstream from their recipe for success of low res, high IQ. I can’t wait to see hi-res samples from the D800 because it will confirm or bust this theory. If you’ve seen the detail that LF film or MF digital produces, you’ll understand.

Live view – Up until the D3s, Nikon’s live view was very 3rd world compared to Canon. The ability to meter and zoom to x10 anywhere in the frame is a brilliant function. If Nikon has improved on this they’ve won serious brownie points from me.

Noise – Canon has a native ISO range going two stops higher, but Nikon has dominated noise performance over the past years. This is going to be interesting.

Highlights – Most readers of my blog know my passionate hate of Nikon’s highlight tones and colors in skies. If this hasn’t improved then there’s no chance of me buying a D800.

Price and availability – The canon is set to be a few $100 more and history has shown that Nikon is better at getting things on the shelf on time…

I honestly don’t know what to expect. These cameras will come packed with 3-4 years of R&D. My main standing point is that I’m doubtful about 36mp in a 35mm sensor. The proof will be in the pudding, so lets hope the pudding hits the shelves ASAP!

Download Link

Karoo Storm

To obtain the ideal sharpness at a low resolution, you have to sharpen the image multiple times at larger resolutions. There are so many variables that come into play here regarding which methods to use, how many times to sharpen and at which various resolutions to sharpen that I don’t think any two photographers use the exact same method. The problem with this method is that it robs the image slightly of color and you have to do something to replace it afterwards. While 99% of people are probably just going to download the action and not even look at the steps, I know there’s a few nerds out there that will appreciate the detail and use it to write their own actions suited to their photography and workflow. This is for you guys!

Throughout the action I only use the unsharp mask sharpening function, varying only the sharpening amount while keeping the pixel radius and threshold constant. The first sharpening is done on the original layer, then step two and three is done on a duplicate layer for final adjustment. I learned the automate resize trick from Philip Perold. It allows you to tell the action to make the longest side of the image a specified size, so you don’t need separate actions for portrait and landscape images. I’m only explaining the 900px example, but the action has a 720px, 900px and 1024px action in it.

Sharpening to 900px

• Filter – Sharpen – Unsharp Mask ( amount 150, radius 0.5, threshold 0 )
• File – Automate – Fit Image (width 2300, height 2300 )
• Duplicate Layer ( CTRL + J | APPLE + J )
• Filter – Sharpen – Unsharp Mask (amount 150, radius 0.5, threshold 0 )
• File – Automage – Fit Image ( width 1500px, height 1500px )
• Filter – Sharpen – Unsharp Mask ( amount 80, radius 0.5, threshold 0 )
• File – Automate – Fit Image ( width 900px, height 900px )

Highlight Diffusion

I think that everyone reading this blog probably knows the work of Marc Adamus. His processing of images has astounded landscape photographers for many years now and no one can put a finger on what exactly makes it so special (apart from mindblowing composition and light). Myself and another photographer noticed that the bright highlights in his photos are often very fuzzy and we did quite a bit of experimenting to try and imitate it. What we came up with is using luminosity selections to get a selection of the highlights and then blowing it using two methods. The selection I use is [basic lights] – [super lights] so that the very right side of the histogram isn’t blown too much when applying this diffusion. Once you’ve got the selection, create a layer of it and set it to color dodge. This makes the selection a lot brighter and more colorful. Then apply a guassian blur to the selection of 2-4 pixels, which will make it very soft. You can now adjust this layer to a low opacity (10-20%) and it will give that soft diffusion to the  highlights in the image

Feel free to make suggestions and I’ll build it into the action if I think you’ve got something worthy to add!

Download Action

Right click me and select “save as”

On the photography side I feel quite stoked though. I saw and photographed many amazing places in S.A and Namibia. Good business removed any doubts I had about pursuing this career. I got a 4×4 vehicle which has opened many of Southern Africa’s very best landscapes up to me. I was planning to leave on a 5 week trip at the end of this month, but I’m involved in certain publishing projects that require a lot of shooting close to home.

I also came to the stupidly obvious realization that I live in the cradle of one of South Africa’s most amazing mountain ranges. A treasure chest of towering granite peaks that have barely been photographed. I feel extremely ambitious to get serious about hiking this year in an attempt to create a portfolio of the Cape’s mountains that might some day be compared to John Hone’s work of the Drakensberg. There are many places on my destination list this year, but my top priority is to find my way around the Cape mountains’ best hiking routes so that I’m prepared for misty Autumn sunrises,  Winter snow and Spring flowers. Other places I long to visit are the Richtersveld, Drakensberg, Kubu Island, Pondoland and Lesotho. I’ll be spending About three weeks at Namibia’s best locations again this year hosting workshops and some shooting by myself.

Workshops

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be working with the legendary Chris Fallows this year to offer his clients landscape add-ons when they come to shoot great white’s sharks with his company. There is still one spot left on the C4 Namibia workshop from 18-25 March. It’s truly the ultimate landscape photography experience in Africa. We’ve got special access permits for Sossusvlei and the whole of Excelsior farm in the Namib Rand to our self.

If you can’t take 10 days off to make it to Namibia, check out my seascape workshop for Cape Town in April. An easy and convenient learning experience with some of the best seascapes in the country to shoot while learning. I will advertise a similar Gauteng workshop shortly, but a lot of the learning lies in shooting a photogenic landscape, which Gauteng doesnt have. Coming down to Cape Town for the weekend will be a much better learning experience. I would appreciate if any people interested in a Gauteng workshop similar to the Cape Town one would be interested? Just mail me or comment here!

Tutorials??

Part two of the Namibia guide will be published next week. I’ve run dry with ideas for tutorials so if there’s a specific field or Photoshop trick that someone is interested in then they’re welcome to shoot with suggestions! Just comment below

An Exciting Year Ahead

The whole photographic industry is on the edge of it’s chair to see the the 1Dx and D4 in action and for the release of the D800 and 5D III. Technology is advancing and I can’t wait to get one of these new cameras and see how they will help me improve my photography! I’ll end of with some recent images from the Cape.

Most people have welcomed the fact that canon have finally decided to make the move to full frame, which has been the main difference between the two in the past. Now for the first time both brands are simultaneously releasing a fast, full frame, high resolution camera with near identical specs. If you look at the past timeline then it’s obvious that it took both companies longer than usual to develop these cameras and my guess is that they were so obsessed with the pixel race in the past that they fell behind in keeping the peripheral systems of their cameras on par with the pixels.

Even after 4 years of R&D they’ve had to settle for sensors of 16 and 18mp for the Nikon and Canon respectively, when both have had massive success with their 24 and 21mp sensors in slower cameras. So the peripheral systems are still far behind the pixel technologies. I’m especially interested to see how this new sensor from Canon will perform because Canon pushed the pixel race much further than Nikon with production models like the 7D featuring sensors of a monstrous pixel density and new individual-pixel designs. I’m confident that they learned quite a few lessons from that sensor which they’ve been able to apply in creating the ultimate “low” resolution full frame sensor.

Canon 1Dx

If the 4 years have been worth the wait, then these two new cameras will raise the bar on everything from dynamic range to noise performance and they’ll be doing it at a resolution just slightly under the 20mp we’ve been enjoying in much slower cameras. One needs to stop looking at individual specs of the cameras, but at what they will mean when combined to push the boundaries of what can be captured in nature. Faster processors, higher native ISO’s, better metering and focus systems and brand new sensors should open doors to photographers who have been technically limited in their creativity.

The rumour sites will now obviously turn their attention to wild guesses about what the yellow and red will produce on the slower high res side of things, but I’m of the firm belief that there needs to be some revolutionary technological advancement before sensors and lenses can truly resolve more than 25-30mp of detail in a 35mm sensor. Until solid facts can change that view, I’m not really interested in a 35mm camera with a 30 megapixel sensor.

Nikon D4

I can only speculate about how these cameras will perform in the fields crucial to me, but the past models of each brand have always held strong pros and cons and how the companies have improved on the cons will determine which one I’ll be buying. Below are my main problems with each system, which will be the crucial factors in determining which camera I favour.

Low Light Performance

In January last year we were three photographers shooting side by side in Deadvlei at night. There was a 5D II, a 1D4 and a D3s and we all had f/2.8 lenses shooting wide open at ISO3200 for 30 seconds. While the settings were identical it’s just as if the Nikon pulls an extra stop of light out of nowhere. The Milky Way came out brighter, the subtle blues and yellows in the sky were stronger. The D3s is just undeniably superior in that field.

Highlight Performance

3 months later I was hosting a seascape workshop in Arniston…I was shooting with my 5D II and between my clients there was a  D700, D3s and D3x. It was a beautiful sunset with strong oranges and we were all shooting into the sun. My camera captured the sky as I saw it with my eyes with perfect white-orange-yellow tonal graduation, while all the Nikons produced a muddy clipped white-yellow graduation. We all know Nikon’s highlights are more yellow while Canon’s are more red, but that is a relatively incorrect way of stating it if you ask me. I would put it as Canon’s colours are true and Nikon’s are too yellow.

One of Nikon’s tricks to getting cleaner images is that the photo is slightly overexposed in the pre-raw stage which produces a cleaner image which is then darkened again to produce a raw file of the intended exposure. Because the image is slightly overexposed, the cleaner image comes at the cost of the quality of the highlights.

That many of Nikon’s lenses are sharper is no rumour. Lens design is a trade-off between contrast/colour and sharpness and while Canon sticks to a balance between the two, Nikon opts for sharper glass, sacrificing colour in the process. To compensate for it, the colour, specifically the yellows are then oversaturated. They can then do more pre-raw noise reduction to produce a cleaner image because their systems produce slightly sharper images.

The end result of these two things is that Nikon’s extreme highlights in red skies are clipped, yellow and have bad tonal graduation compared to Canon. While it is not really an issue in most photographic genres, it plays a big role in natural colours in landscape photography. Sunset skies come out too yellow and it’s not something that can be easily corrected in processing. Let’s face it, landscape photographers live in eternal pursuit of red skies.

Live View

Whether you like it or not, live view is here to stay and many people including myself have embraced it. It makes shooting ten times easier and gives you an exact preview of your image and how graduated filters will affect the exposure before you’ve even pressed the button. When you’ve set up a composition on your tripod, you can take a Light reading anywhere in the frame thanks to the metering block that can move to any position in the frame. You can also zoom in ten times and check that your focus is spot on within any part of the frame. Nikon’s live view is just plain terrible in comparison and I hope that they’ve worked on this area.

Conclusion

Things that immediately caught my attention are the 1Dx’s whopping 100-51200 native ISO range and the D4′s Iphone/Ipad wireless control function. If by some miracle the Canon can produce a ISO6400 image at the quality of a ISO3200 image of the D3s, then the D4 stands no chance on my shopping list!

If this new Canon sensor can give Nikon a run for its money in capturing a night sky, then I’m definitely not changing brands. If it doesn’t and Nikon has improved on its highlights and live view then I will most probably be joining the dark side. While it’s fun to speculate and waste away your nights arguing with people you’ve never met, I prefer to wait and see the real results. It’s taken 4 years, but I’m sure these cameras are building the next plateau in digital still photography. Let’s hope that both hit the shelves on time and that the companies have placed them in the right hands for testing…

If the 5D III is as good value for money as the 5D II was, then I know I’ll rather buy two of those than either of these pro bodies. It’s going to be an exciting year in this field and I can’t wait to see what Canon and Nikon deliver!

Simply purchase your print of choice using the print order system in the gallery. Once you go to the cart you will see a ‘comment’ field at the bottom of the page. Just add the gallery and image title of your 2nd print choice and I will confirm with you via email that it is the correct image. Please read the prints page section for information on the paper options and order process!

My recommendations for prints

Deadvlei, Namibia

Amphitheatre in Mist, Drakensberg

Cold Front Blues, Kogelbay

Kokerboom Kloof, Richtersveld

Hole in the Wall, Wild Coast

Blyde River Canyon

Quiver Trees of Namibia

The effect of an ND grad

I’m writing this after about 4 years of experience on using grad filters which started with a Cokin P system, went to their Z system and those were quickly discarded for a basic Lee kit after which I decided to invest in a full Lee kit.

I want to give people good advice on my blog and I feel that I would be dishonest if I said that Cokin filters are useful for anything more than a temporary learning experience. The holder system feels and functions like it was made in a chinese toy factory and their filters completely ruin that golden light that landscape photographers put so much effort into finding. The color cast is horrendous. If you disagree then I think you should have your eyes calibrated. If you like that magenta, good for you! What I will however say is that shooting with Cokin grads taught me a valuable lesson about natural colour…by that I don’t mean true color. I’m referring to the variation of colors that natural light can produce in different weather. When I shot with Cokin filters I always saw that the colors in my image weren’t what I saw with my eyes. No effort in Photoshop could get them back to how I remembered the scene. This spurred me on to do research into better products and it led me to Lee filters. Do Lee filters have NO color cast? Of course not…they also have, but it’s not nearly as bad and it’s a more natural brown than Cokin’s awful magenta. I should probably also mention to the uninformed that Lee filters are about 3-5 times more expensive depending on where you buy, but if you’re serious about landscape photography then it’s worth every cent.

Luckily for all of you, I learned that lesson so you don’t have to waste your money on a set of Cokin filters.

The Lee holder

So where do you start when looking at purchasing a Lee filter kit? The first thing is obviously to understand how the filters are attached to the lens…You have an adapter ring that screws into the filter thread of the lens and the filter holder clips onto the ring by means of a simple spring tensioned mechanism. Unlike the Cokin holder which is a solid piece of molded junk, the Lee holder is an assembly of high quality plastic and brass parts that can be customized to your needs. So if you’re shooting with a wide angle lens and vignetting is an issue then you can attach just one slot to the holder or if this isn’t an issue then you can attach all three.

There are a vast amount of different filters, but only two that you really need to focus on. Graduated ND filters and solid ND filters. Based on what I use the most, I’ve listed three kits below depending on what you want to spend. Each item is hyperlinked to the product page on www.robertwhite.co.uk…I’m not endorsing them as a retailer, their website is just well structured and gives you a good idea of what you’ll be paying. The prices below are purely an estimation…with the volatile exchange rate the prices I post today will be irrelevant by next week anyway. Remember that you’ll have to add shipping and import tax to the foreign prices as well for S.A.  Do your own calculations.

The Basic Kit – R3000-R4000 ( $500)

This kit is good for starting out and will be fine for most situations with a linear horizon. You can easily expand to the novice kit by simply adding the multi filter pouch and soft and hard sets when the time is right. The proglass solid ND is an excellent tool for manipulating your shutterspeed to get motion blur from moving elements in a landscape like a river or wave or even people in urban shots.

• Wide Angle Adapter Ring
• DSLR starter kit
• 0.9 hard grad

The Novice Kit – R8000-R12000 ( $800)

This kit is pretty much the same as the basic kit except that you’ve got all six of the basic grads which you gives you finer exposure control for more versatile situations. Protective storage of the filters is essential which is why you should get the multi pouch. With the 15% difference in price, there’s really no justifiable reason to get the normal ring. Vignetting will always be an issue with grad filters so get the wide angle ring/rings.

• Wide Angle Adapter Ring (Various sizes if necessary)
• Foundation Holder Kit
• Hard Grad Set
• Soft Grad Set
• 0.9 Proglass Solid ND
• Multi Filter Pouch

The Professional Kit – R15000-R25000 ( $2000)

This is the ultimate kit and offers the best combination of all filters. Using the 0.6+0.9+big stopper solid ND filters in combination with ISO and aperture you can achieve virtually any shutterspeed in golden light from 1/10s to  30 minutes. The 6 basic grads allow you to balance the exposure of almost any landscape and the front-attaching polarizer enables you to rotate it independently from the grads so you can cut out glare or get that cobalt sky. The polarizer ring screws into the front of the holder and the polarizer screws into that. The reason I suggest you get the professional holder kit with two holders is for a vignetting problem with the 105mm polarizer, which is quite thick. I have one holder with three slots and this gives me no vignetting on my Zeiss 18mm. Then I have one holder with only one slot and the polarizer ring on. With the polarizer attached this doesn’t show up in the frame either and this suits 95% of situations I’ve encountered. If you need to add another grad, you can just bracket and blend for the rare 5% of situations.

• Wide Angle Adapter Ring (Various sizes if necessary)
• Professional Holder Kit
• Hard Grad Set
• Soft Grad Set
• 0.9 Proglass Solid ND
• 0.6 Proglass Solid ND
• Big Stopper
• Multi Filter Pouch
• 105mm front polarizer ring
• B+W 105mm Kaesemann Circular Polarizer

Holder with CPL ring attached and CPL

Valuable Lessons

Some things I’ve learned over the past three years

• SW150 system – I’ve had a play with these on Nikon’s 14-24mm lens and I wasn’t impressed. The setup is very complicated and the filters are gigantic, using it is very far from convenient. There was also ghosting from light reflecting in between the filter and lens, but I’ve read that Ian Plant uses the system and if he’s happy with it then I was probably just not using it correctly. Perhaps he can comment on it…
• Don’t underestimate how easily the resin filters scratch – don’t put them in your pocket or on any surface if they’re not in the wax paper or velvet pouch. You may not be able to see it, but the resin gets micro scratches and before long you can’t shoot into bright light anymore without getting very ugly flare.
• Don’t underestimate how easily the glass filters shatter – I’ve lost two proglass ND’s to shattering. Luckily my insurance was happy to replace it for me which brings me to my next point.
• All risk insurance – I’ve broken two glass filters by accident and lost a whole holder full of filters from shooting on high sea cliffs in freezing winter weather, but then again I may just be very clumsy.
• Combine soft and hard – If the difference is 3 stops and a hard grad is too hard and a soft is too soft, why not use a 2-stop hard and 1-stop soft or vice versa…
• Resin is warm, glass is cold – The grads have a brown cast and the proglass ND’s have a blue cast. With some ingenuity you can counter color cast by combining them in situations where shutterspeed isn’t a major issue.
• They scratch easily so look after them extremely well (I know I repeated myself)
• In 51% of situations HDR will suffice, but it will never be a true substitute.
• Owning them doesn’t mean you know how to use them so don’t get a shock when you just spent a fortune but your landscapes still suck. There are NO shortcuts in photography. It takes a lot of practice and experience to utilize such a system to it’s full potential. After a while you develop a natural intuition for it and metering the exposure difference in a scene becomes redundant.
• Singh Ray filters – I have heard from knowledgeable sources that their color cast is worse than Lee’s. On top of that it’s more expensive and their distribution network is more limited so it’s harder to come by.
• Hitech – apparently sort of halfway between Lee and Cokin? <— Notice the question mark, I don’t know anything about it so I can’t give a reliable opinion.

0.9 Proglass ND...What's left of it after a fall