Cheap eBay ND Filter

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Jamiej

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Jamie
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Hi all,

I recently purchased some very inexpensive china made ND filters from eBay, the set came with a 2 4 and 8. I plan to use them on my "nifty 50" and will post the results.

You can mega mega money for filters but unless your using a mega mega money lens, is it worth it?

Jamie
 
Hi

Just because the 50mm lens is affordable don't underrate its capabilities. It is a first class lens.

I'm not sure how important it is to have top class filters of this type. All will be revealed when you post the results. Good luck.

Graham.
 
Some cheap lens are bad, some are OK and a few produce brilliantly sharp images. If you put a cheap piece of plastic in front of them, it will only degrade the quality ever further. It doesn't matter how much a lens cost, even paying mega money you can get a lemon, but if you have a good lens, it's worth investing in a quality filter.
I found that most if not all cheap ND filters affect the image colour too much.
 
Hi jamie,

I brought the same cheap ND filters as you did. I thought they'd be a ideal inbetweener before i brought a proper ND 110 filter.

I used them once, they gave an awful purple colourcast, especially when stacked up. They seemed to make the images very soft aswell.

So don't expect great things from them im afraid, the age old saying you get what you pay for definatly works in this case.
 
Fingers crossed! If there is a purplish colour cast, I should be able to remove that in photoshop, right?

Going to the breakfast club (Goodwood) on Sunday so hope to make all the passers by invisible with super long exposures.

Jamie
 
Hi Jamie,

I've used those and as stated, they're Ok-ish when you use just one but as soon as you start to stack them the picture goes to pot in terms of softness and colour!
 
Jamiej said:
If there is a purplish colour cast, I should be able to remove that in photoshop, right?
Click to expand...

Not always, but why would you want to make your job more difficult by trying to correct an image in photoshop, get it right in camera.
 
Simply because, providing it's not a huge amount of work, it seems to make more sense (to me, on a tight budget) than shelling out 50x the amount of money for the B&W one.
 
Jamiej said:
Simply because, providing it's not a huge amount of work, it seems to make more sense (to me, on a tight budget) than shelling out 50x the amount of money for the B&W one.
Click to expand...


I'm afraid that PhotoShop can't fix everything, a poor quality filter will do more than just introduce a colour cast. It could adversely affect contrast, cause unwanted flare, distortion, softening of the image and ruin the relationship between colours just to name a few. All filters will have some effect but some are barely noticeable while others are not worth the time. Sure you can adjust in PhotoShop but you can't polish a turd.
 
Have bought some from 7dayshop and they are perfect good value
 
I'm sure they won't be perfect, as stated but just for a small amount of money I think they could be good fun. Appreciate PS cannot make an awful photo incredible but I think it is definitely worth a go.

I also picked up a welding glass lens which I am almost more excited about trying!
 
Sorry to say that I couldn't really get the hang of the ND filters so nothing really to post!
 
If there is a colour cast shoot raw, use a custom white balance.

If there is softness but you like the effects bin them and buy something better.
 
Jamiej said:
Sorry to say that I couldn't really get the hang of the ND filters so nothing really to post!
Click to expand...

Why not?

Getting the exposure right isn't always easy, but not hard either. Did you remember to cover the viewfinder during exposure? You can sort colour problems as mentioned above (custom white balance, or in post).

Once you start getting decent results you will surely want to get something better, but you should be able to do long exposures at least if you stack them all together (total six stops reduction).
 
I had cheap ND filters on ebay that I used with my kit lens, and for the price it wasn't bad, but they gave a colour cast (although fixable) but impacted IQ a lot if more than 1 filter were used. I found 3 stops not enough for I wanted to achieve but it was nice try-out. I think I'll be trying cheap 10 stop welding glass next :)
 
Razor-BladE said:
I had cheap ND filters on ebay that I used with my kit lens, and for the price it wasn't bad, but they gave a colour cast
Click to expand...

I've got expensive Cokin filters and they give a colour cast too so don't think this is exclusive to cheaper ones :gag:
 
Yeah I heard that. Probably not as bad, and doesn't impact IQ that much. One day (a very long time from now) I'll buy the Lee kit. :)
 
I think my problem was not knowing exactly the effect I was going for, so I just ended up with some fairly average snaps with blurry people in the background (i was snapping cars at Goodwood)
 
check them out and let us know? With Cokin you're ok until you stack them then you get bad red colour cast.
 
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