Lik

CPL will be a lot more useful than than ND filters la. Besides, you can think of a CPL as an ND filter as well (usually an ND4).

Unless you are really into shooting waterfalls, bodies of water, etc., I really can't think of very many uses for ND filters (graduated or not). But if those are your type of thing, then only the ND filters will do the trick. But even then, you'd still need to get at least a few of them so that you can pick the right one for situation at hand.

-Lik

Lik

The biggest use of a polarizer is to get that deep blue sky effect. I personally love that colour, even if it may look a little cliche. Besides, the CPL helps with colour saturation, a problem that that is common to my stupid camera. So if I am out shooting non-people pictures, it is always good to carry around.

The thing with regular ND filters is, except for shooting bodies of water where you want the lengthen the exposure time by a sufficiently large amount, I really can't think of any other uses for them. For something of such limited use, you really want to think it over if it'd be worth your while.

For graduated ND filters, I suppose you could use that in more situations than the regular ND filters. But again, how often will you use it?

Last but not least, the last time when I bought a CPL, I simply bought a cheapa$$ eBay one for $10 - $15. It worked well, even though I'm pretty sure it wasn't a multi-coated CPL as the guy had advertised. A true multi-coated CPL of the same size would have costed me nearly $200 from B&H; even a non-multi-coated one was something in the $150 - $160 range. At a 10th of the price, there is no way in hell I'd buy a brand name one from camera stores.

-Lik

p.s. In my experience, CPL's usually soak up ~2 stops' worth of light, but there will likely be some variance depending on the filter. At any rate, it's easy enough to tell if you were to do a simple comparison test, shooting the exact same scene under identical lighting condition with and without the CPL. And when you are doing the comparison test shot, don't forget to adjust the CPL correctly as well.

Lik

unless you got very very thin filters, you'll have a LOT of vignette if you stack filters, especia ...
siumaibb 發表於 2011-5-13 09:40

I was gonna say exactly the same thing.

At 28mm, I can't stack my CPL on top of my UV filter without getting a bit of vignetting. At 24mm, the vignetting is bad enough that the photo becomes unacceptable.

Also, not that it is a big deal, but in response to Sheep, how often do you need to reduce glare / reflections from windows or bodies of water? I think getting a deep blue sky has more merit (and usage frequency) than glare / reflection elimination wor?

-Lik