Filters

嘉嘉

I am kinda thinking about getting a filter......
which is more oftenly used?

CPL? ND? or grad ND?

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

嘉嘉

to tell the truth
I have a 58mm CPL, but don't think I used it much either ^_^;;;
but you are also right that I don't shoot water/waterfall very much (I do like those kind of things, but I don't always find one to shoot at)

just that the lens I use very often now is 67mm, so I do need a new filter
I was thinking about using a CPL as a ND too

but just don't know how many stops would it be equivalent to.......

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.

Look4chrisng

You can also stack 2 CPL filters to make it a 300xND filter by changing the orientations of the each filter.  It gets really crazy.

Look4chrisng

f22/0.8sec

Shooting people with slow shutter is fun.

sheep

The biggest use of a polarizer is to get that deep blue sky effect.
Lik 發表於 2011-5-13 01:01

I rather would say no, because, to my limited knowledge, it is use to reduce the stray lights that exist from different reflection surface. the common use is to reduce the reflection on windows so you can have a  clear shot through the window.

It is a filter with two filters that allows only light coming in one direction. so if you rotate them to reach an angle of 90 degree, then it is suppose to have filter all stray lights. So, you have a few stops drop of aperture.

The richer color saturation is the result of less stray lights.

ND filter only lower the intensity of incident light instead of filtering the reflected light.

Catpiano

Why do you want CPL and ND sin?  for key shift? or blue sky? or reduce reflection?

Well ...  I got tons of filters at home ..  but at the end of the day, other then UV(protection) rarely use other filters ..

嘉嘉

I rather would say no, because, to my limited knowledge, it is use to reduce the stray lights that ...
sheep 發表於 2011-5-13 07:24

yes this is why I was also thinking a CPL would be handy sometime......

嘉嘉

You can also stack 2 CPL filters to make it a 300xND filter by changing the orientations of the each ...
Look4chrisng 發表於 2011-5-13 04:17

oh @O@!!
never thought of that
but how do you stack a filter on top of the other?