Filling The Bag, Part 2: Filters

Continuing my summary of the wonderful feedback I have received on What's Missing From My Bag? (see the first follow-up at Filling The Bag, Part 1: Lenses), today we have Part 2: Filters, with more of your wonderful feedback and another of my pre-trip purchases.

I think I got more recommendations on filters than any other single topic, and most of that love was for the ND Grad (or neutral density graduated filter). The ND Grad was recommended in flickr comments from FanciThat and Jer Kunz. On my blog post, Mike Hudson commented:
The graduated ND is pretty useful. You can get around it by shooting two images, one for the sky and one for the foreground, then combining in PS, but it's better to get one shot in-camera. My Singh-Ray ND filter cost $100. Lee makes good ones too. A filter holder would be handy too though you can get by without one.
I totally agree with Mike; I have done blending of two exposures (and also HDR images with between 3 and 9 exposures combined), but in many cases it's really nice to get one shot just right in the camera.

Others suggested just plain ND filters (useful for forcing longer exposure times to blur moving water, etc). I was amazed to discover you can get an ND filter that takes out 10 stops of light (the B+W ND 1000x). Not cheap, though! The helpful proprietor of Wings Camera suggested that sometimes just putting your circular polarizer (CP) filter on will give enough of a slowdown to achieve this effect, and since I already have a CP, I'll definitely give that a try.

Flickr friend the_wolf_brigade wondered if I had considered an IR filter (one which allows only infrared light to pass through). I have seen some strikingly beautiful landscape photos done with IR, so I'll put that on my "someday" list. I'm not actually certain if my K100d Super supports IR well or not, I need to check.

Lastly (hope I haven't missed anything) flickr user grindcrank suggests a macro converter attachment such as the Raynox DCR-250. That is actually a great idea, but my Canon S2IS supports macro work quite well (see some of my macro work here and here), and I'll probably carry it on at least one or two excursions to capture some unique close-up views.

And now for the moment you've all(?) been waiting for: I did, in fact, purchase an ND Grad filter, and at a decent bargain price, too. I found this beauty in a discount bin at the front of the nearest Wolf Camera store:


As you can see from the label on its carrying case, this is a Cokin G2 A121. I paid $8.50 for it, which appears to be less than half of what they're going for on eBay. I should note that the "A" series Cokin filters are the smaller ones (most folks seem to go for the "P" series which are slightly larger). In my case, all my current lenses take either a 52mm or 55mm filter, so I don't need the larger size of the "P" series yet. Note that I have not yet bought the bracket that holds these square filters on the end of your lens, but it works OK to hand-hold it. If I find a bargain price on the bracket sometime, I may pick it up; or I may decide that I don't need it and it's a waste of space in my bag.

So, how well does it work? I'm afraid the jury's still out on that one. As you probably know, the main point of an ND Grad filter is to prevent the sky from blowing out when it's much brighter than the landscape you are attempting to photograph. Here's a quick grab from my front porch yesterday:


Click through to flickr to see it much larger. This was taken in auto mode, just letting the camera decide how to expose the scene. As you can see on the left (no filter) the yellow of my neighbor's house and the green grass are very dark and colorless, and yet the sky is still mostly blown out. On the right, with the filter in place, the sky is still not great, but the house and yard are fairly well-exposed.

Obviously, if I was trying to get a "keeper" landscape shot, I'd have been in manual mode and would have carefully adjusted the settings to get a much more interesting exposure. I can tell already that I've got some trial-and-error ahead with my ND Grad, but three cheers for digital cameras and LCD chimping.

Thanks again for all your feedback.

--sdc