I was looking at getting a filter collection to add to my photography kit. The trouble is, I have no idea what the best brands are, or where the best place to get them. I'm particularly interested in a Graduated Neutral Density filter for landscapes. I found one on eBay at a shop which sells all kinds of filters, but I'm worried that they're cheap for a reason. Some advice on this would be appreciated. Link to GND filter.
Although I can't comment on those brand of filters in particular, you will find often that cheap filters will tend to have a bit of a magenta colour cast which can be a pain to fix in PP. Also, if you are looking specifically into getting into landscape photography with filters you will be much better suited with a Cokin type filter system. What sort of budget are you looking at for these?
As cheap as possible to be honest. With family committments, it's difficult to put a lot of money into photography equipment. What would you recommend? EDIT: Just looked at some Cokin kits and they look pretty smart. Anyone with any experience with them?
Yep, have a Cokin P holder and adapters for 72mm and 55mm lenses. I use P121 and P121L ND grads and have a P154 ND filter for long daytime exposures. It's a better system than the circular screw on ones. For a start, you can adjust the level of the filter vertically to match the horizon (rule of thirds etc.) Probably not the best examples, but these were shot with a P121: Large Large
Cokin kits are good VFM. i would say get a cokin holder and hitek filters as hitek filters are better quality and they fit nicely. i also have a cokin blue gold polorizer. its just lovely!!!
+1 for cokin holders, they're pretty affordable. I started off with a cokin holder and two Hitech filters. They Hitech were more expensive than Cokin filters, but supposedly their color accuracy is a little better with no magenta cast. For GNDs, don't get a circular filter, ESPECIALLY NOT an unbranded one found on ebay.
Cokin P series holder comes in at around £12, plus an adapter ring at around £10 ea. Filters; depends what you get and where you get them from. Cokin filters range from £15-30 on Amazon, but it might be worth while stopping by your local camera shop and seeing what they have.
7dayshop.com stock some of the more popular filters from Cokin, and their price on the holder isn't bad when its in stock. and also at premier inks. they also have the kood make of filter, which fits the cokin p system. I think I have Kood ND gradients and found them to have less of a colour cast than my cokin NDs. neither are as nice as the hitek filters I have.
The HiTech filters are pretty good - I've used them for almost a year now, but have decided to upgrade to a set of the more expensive Lee filters. The slot filter system is much preferred over the screw filters for landscape photography, as it will give you much more creative freedom. I don't want to dump on your thread, but I've got a full set of HiTech filters that I might be looking to sell if you are interested in buying a second hand set. I've got 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 ND grads with both soft and hard edges, which are surplus to requirements. I paid about £70 for each kit when they were new from http://www.teamworkphoto.com (£59+VAT), so £140 for the two kits, and I'm open to offers. They're in good condition, so let me know if you're interested. I can include a HiTech 100mm system filter holder with 67mm and 77mm filter rings (the latter is a wide-angle ring), if required, at an additional cost.
It's probably worth mentioning that the two lenses that I have with my Nikon D40 are the 18-55mm kit lens (52mm), and a Tamron 70-300mm lens (62mm). Should have put that in the first post, Which one should I get the filters for? Thanks for the offer Tim, but I'm not in a position to drop £140 just yet. If you still have them in the future then I'll give you a PM
I wasn't expecting you to pay full price, but I'm useless with valuation so I was effectively saying make me a reasonable offer. As for which filter system to go for, it depends how you plan to 'grow' over time. If you opt for the smaller Cokin kit today (I forget the name), it'll be too small for any lenses you might buy in the future with a diameter bigger than 67 or 72mm (I forget which, but it was surprisingly small). I originally went for the 100mm system because I felt I could upgrade to higher-quality filters over time as my lens collection gets bigger and my needs become more specific. I'd read about the Cokin filters having a green-to-pinkish tinge and relatively poor quality control compared to others (different tinges from different filters, which makes it harder to correct in post processing). I'm sure others, who use the Cokin filters, will have good experiences with them and I do think they're an excellent introduction to filtration. The HiTech filters still have a slight tinge (tends towards purple), but the quality control seems fairly consistent - the filters I've got have virtually the same tinge across all of them. The only way to get completely neutral density filters is to opt for Lee's very expensive system (more than 2x the price of the HiTech filters), which is very good from the brief time I've had to use them so far, but it's obviously not the kind of money that everyone wants to spend on what is, ultimately, a piece of plastic.
Is there a way that I could get an adaptor to fit a larger filter onto my smaller lens? I have an adaptor which fits smaller filters onto larger lenses, but I may as well buy larger filters for more compatibility.
Whichever system you buy, you'll need filter adaptor rings to adapt the filter holder onto your lenses. The good thing about this is you buy one set of filters, one holder and then just add new filter rings when you get new lenses and new filters as you see fit. What's more, you only need one ring per filter thread size, as you can swap it onto the lens that you're using if you've got more than one 52mm diameter lens for example. Most of my lenses are 77mm diameter, but I've got one 67mm and one 82mm lens. I decided to get (almost) one filter adaptor ring per lens. I've not quite got one per lens (I've got two 77mm between three 77mm lenses), but I can quickly switch lenses without having to attach filter adaptor rings in a hurry. The great thing is that the system offers a huge amount of flexibility over threaded filters - and it's not just about the creative flexibility (i.e. where you position the horizon in the frame), but also supporting a large lens collection. Imagine having to buy ND 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 filters in both hard and soft gradations for a large collection of lenses... there's an awful lot of glass you'd have to buy for a set that allows the flexibility to change lenses quickly.
