After the umpteenth request about which filters one should buy for landscape photography I have decided to put it in a blog article. You should know by now what the filters are for so I will briefly elaborate on the various components of the system. In most cases I will be referring to Lee’s range of products as it is the globally preferred brand.
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.
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
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Just to chip in regarding Singh-Ray vs. Lee – I can’t really say either is better regarding colour casts. As long as the grad effect is not very strong, the colour cast is negligible with both brands.
The only reason I have Singh-Rays is that whilst living in SA, I found it easier to order. Singh Ray sends it from the States immediately. Since moving to the UK, I thought that Lee would be easier to source – but you’re quite right in mentioning their supply problems. I waited for two months for my Lee grads…and that’s taking the notoriously slow SA postal service out of the equation.
Comment by Jon Reid — October 19, 2011 @ 4:43 pm
An interesting comment that
“In 51% of situations HDR will suffice, but it will never be a true substitute.”
I would personally take the stance that in nearly every situation exposure blending (which I assume you are calling HDR) will be as good or better than grads. There are some very specific advantages of grads however that I think are worth mentioning…If you are shooting into a bright light source even the best lenses will allow the light to bleed a bit into the dark foreground. When you take your exposure for the foreground, with the sky blown out, you can get a reduction in contrast. Since filters directly hold back this brightness in the sky you dont get quite such an issue with light bleed.
The other very minor advatage you would get with grads is harder to explain, but I will try! Imagine you are doing an exposure blend between 2 images, one with the sky correctly exposed, but the foreground black, and one with the fforeground correctly exposed, but the sky white. If you put the blend below the horizon then you end up mixing the correctly exposed foreground with black. Mixing colours with black muddies them, you arent getting a brightness transition, you are mixing it with black. There is a subtle difference that in some cases would become visible. You can of course get around this by blending intermediate exposures, but it gets more complex the more exposures you use…
Anyway those are the only 2 quality advantages that I can think of in the favour of filters but you do have to weigh that against a number of disadvantages!
As for the American prices for a filter setup, I would probably double check those, I suspect they would be lower, the filter setups you describe would be much cheaper in the UK and I think that follows for the US. Some of your american readers might be put off filters unnecessarily!
Alex
Comment by Alex Nail — October 20, 2011 @ 9:40 am
Thanks for the comment Alex
I’ll check the prices.
While I do agree with your points about single advantages and disadvantages I can’t agree with your collective statement. Keep in mind that you’ve almost never shot at the ocean and fast moving waves are a nightmare for bracketing.
There are tons of practical arguments, but there is also the argument for how it feels to capture that moment in one exposure instead of a bracketed series…it feels ten times better!
While combining the two produces the best results, if I had to choose I would definitely go for blending. It is more versatile, but I think grads still make a major contribution to landscape photography.
Comment by Hougaard Malan — October 20, 2011 @ 9:58 am
Yeah fair point about motion. I have a couple of failed coastal blends, but then its such a minority of images where this is an issue.
I am in agreement that the best results come as a combination of the two, but there is a big list of negatives against grads…
Expensive (to the point of being extortionate)
Straight graduations only – problematic for uneven horizons
Slows down you shooting if time is critical (ie a burst of light)
Add complexity to the capture technique (you have to pick the right filter and place it correctly, you can’t “re-edit”)
Susceptible to damage
More weight
Potential flare/reflection issues shooting into the sun, particularly if the filter is dirty/scratched
Polarisers become more troublesome
Even given that I will eventually pick up some grads, but its hard to justify the expensive when I know they wont noticeably improve my images.
Comment by Alex Nail — October 20, 2011 @ 12:49 pm
[...] Malan writes an interesting introduction on getting started with filters for landscape [...]
Pingback by The WCC Weekly Roundup | The Westville Camera Club — October 23, 2011 @ 8:13 am
Great article Hougaard.
Another clear advantage for grads – When shooting a long exposure of moving clouds and their reflections – bracketing would result in the reflection being misaligned!
That said, the main advantage for me is pure convenience, which cannot be ovrestimated in hard conditions. I think it’s something that you have to use filters to understand and appreciate.
About Singh-Ray filters – it’s useful to mention that they produce filters unavailable from Lee – I’m referring mainly to the reverse grads – a priceless tool for sunsets/sunrises with a flat horizon. Using a hard grad would darken the top of the image way too much in these cases, and the reverse grads solve this by graduating in the other direction as well.
Singh Rays do have some cast. It’s a kind of pink, but is mostly visible when the scene’s colors are not very strong. They are quite expensive, but if you need one, spare the headache and get it!
Comment by Erez Marom — October 30, 2011 @ 11:48 am
To me the biggest disadvantage about blending is the edit (i.e. choosing raw files to take further). When going through images from a trip, I tend to choose images that require the least photoshop work, the ones that look good immediately out of camera. How do you compare two “photos” where the exposures were bracketed?
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Comment by Michael Tree — November 24, 2011 @ 1:15 pm
Hi
Thanks for your blog, I learned a lot from it. I’m into photography quite a while, but bought an SLR last year. I discovered I need some filters. I read your comments on Lee filters.
What do you think of B&W filters. Would you recommend them? What are their disavantages?
Thanks
Marna
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Hi Hougaard
Great article as a relative newbie to photography it took me a while to figure out what was going on with filters and casts , it drove me nuts that what I seen on screen did not match what I was photographing after I had applied filters like lee grads and ND filters and especially my b&w 105 polariser which gave all my images a strange blue cast I find very hard to remove . Could you do a future piece on how you go about dealing with these casts , say the brown mungy casts of the grads to the blue metallic casts of the polarizers .
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