Formatt Hitech 3.0 10 stop Resin or Firecrest glass filters

lightshipman

lightshipman

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Has anyone come across the following,



  • "IMPORTANT NOTE: It is possible that in certain situations, using standard neutral density filters such as this on cameras with CMOS sensors will result in image aberrations. This is usually manifested by a colour shift in the resultant images. We strongly recommend that if you are purchasing a filter for long exposures using CMOS cameras that you buy the PROSTOP filter that has been specifically designed for such use and creates extremely neutral images in all situations.

    Neutral Density filters produce a grey neutral effect and are used to reduce light in photography, enabling more control over exposure and depth of field without affecting colour or contrast. NDs are made in different Densities according to the level of light reduction from 1/3 to as much as 10 Stops of light. The 1.8 ND reduces light by 6 Stops."
Has anyone experienced the above, is it better to buy a firecrest glass 10 stop glass filter, or is the resin version as as good?
 
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Mr Perceptive said:
The resin versions are nowhere near as good, it has a significant colour cast, whereas the glass Firecrests are very neutral. Buy once buy the Firecrest!
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Generally do like to buy better quality, you know the score trying to get something for nothing.
 
I've recently bought the Firecrest and very impressed.
 
RichieTee said:
Massively impressed with the firecrest ND's. So much so I am slowly replacing my existing Lee ND's with them.
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I had notice some people selling Lee stuff for Hitech/ firecrest, that's why I decided to go to Hitech when I needed to upgrade my Cokin p Series stuff to 100mm. I have some grads and nd's, and am impressed by them.
 
The firecrests are very good with very limited colour cast. I did a comparison of the older hitech pro 10 stop and the firecrest 10 stop. I did have it as a blog post on my website but it seems the comparison images have been lost during a website change. The difference was huge. You can colour correct the colour cast to some extent in processing but I was never that good at it.
 
I can't make a direct comparison but I have an older 'ordinary' Hitech 10 stopper which gives a distinct magenta cast with my Canon 550D. I use PaintShop Pro which fails to remove it. I can remove it in DPP but for some reason when I then open the image in PSP it looks different (something to do with the way DPP saves the changes I guess). I don't do enough really long exposure work to have figured it out yet. For what I do I thought the 10 stop was a bit overkill so got the Firecrest 6 stop. I'm extremely happy with it. There is no colour cast at all. It was well worth the money. I have the Hitech resin light ND grads (0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 I think) and they're fine.
 
Colour cast was my issue. Especially with the higher ND effect filter (6,10,15 stops).

It is obviously correctable in post processing but it always looked a bit washed out and the colours never rendered quite right.

The firecrest stuff seems to retain the correct colour and white balance which is one less hassle in PP and the optical quality is equal to the Lee stuff
 
The basic problem is nothing to do with CMOS sensors but the dyes used for resin filters are not capable of cutting out infrared light. This is a major problem with extreme ND filters and results in an uncorrectable colour cast. The older HiTech filters were among the worst for this, and glass filters like the Lee Big Stopper and others are way better, but HiTech have now gone from bottom to top with the Firecrest range. They use a completely different 'metal deposit' technology (as do some other brands now) that doesn't so much filter the light as simply block it, hence minimal colour cast throughout the visible spectrum and beyond (y)
 
Going with the best, will be ordering firecrest 10 stop, have resin grads and nd's, but because of the light corruption, will be buying the best 10 stop. Thankyou all for your input..
 
lightshipman said:
Going with the best, will be ordering firecrest 10 stop, have resin grads and nd's, but because of the light corruption, will be buying the best 10 stop. Thankyou all for your input..
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Which filter holder do you have? The Firecrest holder has a gasket already so no need to fit one, and there's no light leeks. The filter does come with a stick in gasket for use with other holders but can't comment on how good it is.
 
snerkler said:
Which filter holder do you have? The Firecrest holder has a gasket already so no need to fit one, and there's no light leeks. The filter does come with a stick in gasket for use with other holders but can't comment on how good it is.
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I have the ordinary holder, not the firecrest, I have seen the gasket, it's the same on Lee.
 
@lightshipman I have standart 100mm holder and recently bought BigStopper beacuse i had enough the high magenta color cast in weird tones. The problem is - that Bigstopper with gasket is much thicker than first slot in holder (this one with extra spacers) so what i had to do was to sacrifice one slot and reverse the brackets :]
 
TomStoff said:
@lightshipman I have standart 100mm holder and recently bought BigStopper beacuse i had enough the high magenta color cast in weird tones. The problem is - that Bigstopper with gasket is much thicker than first slot in holder (this one with extra spacers) so what i had to do was to sacrifice one slot and reverse the brackets :]
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Thanks, will be wary of that.
 
To follow up, i bought the 10 stop Firecrest square filter from Hitech, these are first images taken using it.

River arrow, Eardisland by Andrew Wright, on Flickr

DSC_0647_00013River Arrow by Andrew Wright, on Flickr

River arrow, Eardisland by Andrew Wright, on Flickr

The glass filter slides into the holder with the extra shim fitted, tight upto the back plate, I couldnt fit the gasket as it would not fit in the holder. I put dark lens wipe just over the top of the filter and covered the eye piece view finder to shut out any light. I am quite plesed with the results, just need to experiment now.
 
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