Light Craft Workshop 10 Stop filter

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rob13

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I have this 9 stop Lightcraft nd filter and love it. I use HiTech nd slot grads.
When I am shooting at 10mm, I do not use my filter holder for the Hitech's, but just attach the filter to the front of the Lightcraft filter with Blu Tac, which avoids vignetting.
 
I just ordered the 9 stop lightcraft :) so will have a play end of the week / next weekend :thumbs: hopefully :clap:
 
keep seeing this in the camera mags
what is it like for quality. does it degrade the image and what about colour casts
anyone got sample images with this filter
 
right now i see. there is 2 filters, a 9 stop, and the 9 stop fader
 
The fader works using 2 co-mounted polarising filters. If you use a polarising filter on a ultra-wide angle, you sometimes get problems with colour variations in the sky - going from pale to dark and back to pale etc. With the fader, it uses 2 of the polarisers in opposition to block out the bulk of the light. Unfortunately with a UWA or WA lens you get fringeing effects with large areas of the image going darker than others. So - they've put a recomendation on them that you don't "turn up the fade" any higher than 3 stops with a UWA. The Longer the lens, the narrower the angle of view, and the less pronounced the effect becomes.

I was about to buy one of them, when I spotted a thread by tdodd, who explained this much better than I can...

Gist of it is, the fader is little or no use on a wide or UWA lens.
 
TheBigYin said:
The fader works using 2 co-mounted polarising filters. If you use a polarising filter on a ultra-wide angle, you sometimes get problems with colour variations in the sky - going from pale to dark and back to pale etc. With the fader, it uses 2 of the polarisers in opposition to block out the bulk of the light. Unfortunately with a UWA or WA lens you get fringeing effects with large areas of the image going darker than others. So - they've put a recomendation on them that you don't "turn up the fade" any higher than 3 stops with a UWA. The Longer the lens, the narrower the angle of view, and the less pronounced the effect becomes.

I was about to buy one of them, when I spotted a thread by tdodd, who explained this much better than I can...

Gist of it is, the fader is little or no use on a wide or UWA lens.
Click to expand...

just going through some photos from a couple of yrs ago in wales, and there is some with that effect in the dark blue sky with the ultra wide i was using.
so how is the normal 9 stop then
any colour casts reported
 
Yes, there are two dark ND filters from Light Craft Workshop. Sadly the fader is uselss - a lot of posts about this if you search my user name.* Give it a miss unless you want a dark cross all over the image as the polarisers clash.

But fortunately, the ND500 is excellent - the best dark ND filter out there, and also the cheapest. Nominally 9-stops, mine is about 8.5. No other filter is multicoated and it's pretty neutral - much better than the B+W. Lack of a front filter thread is a pain (and unnecessary) as is the fact that it's only available in 77mm.

I'm told that other sizes are coming and that the manufacturers have been asked to include a front thread :thumbs:

* Edit: that's one of the threads, the link in post #9 above. Sadly Tim's test images are no longer hosted but trust me they were terrible. I think a lot of happy punters have since got the ND500 though.
 
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HoppyUK said:
Yes, there are two dark ND filters from Light Craft Workshop. Sadly the fader is uselss - a lot of posts about this if you search my user name. Give it a miss unless you want a dark cross all over the image as the polarisers clash.

But fortunately, the ND500 is excellent - the best dark ND filter out there, and also the cheapest. Nominally 9-stops, mine is about 8.5. No other filter is multicoated and it's pretty neutral - much better than the B+W. Lack of a front filter thread is a pain (and unnecessary) as is the fact that it's only available in 77mm.

I'm told that other sizes are coming and that the manufacturers have been asked to include a front thread :thumbs:
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77mm is fine for me as most of my lenses are 77
strange how its not mentioned a lot amongst people who are after strong nd
its always b&w or lee. ok i know they are 10 stop, but this is not that far behind
was going to get the hitech one as thats what im using, but i heard it as colour cast problems
as for front thread. would you be wanting to attach anything else to the front of it ???
 
marky.b said:
77mm is fine for me as most of my lenses are 77
strange how its not mentioned a lot amongst people who are after strong nd
its always b&w or lee. ok i know they are 10 stop, but this is not that far behind
was going to get the hitech one as thats what im using, but i heard it as colour cast problems
as for front thread. would you be wanting to attach anything else to the front of it ???
Click to expand...

B+W and Lee are big companies and Light Craft Workshop are small. It seems to be quite a well kept secret. Avoid the Hitech.

I think a lot of people want to use a grad with this kind of filter, because they both suit seascapes very well. BluTack on top seems like the best idea, although I'm thinking of getting my grad cut circular and putting in a mount so I can fit the ND500 in front of that.
 
HoppyUK said:
B+W and Lee are big companies and Light Craft Workshop are small. It seems to be quite a well kept secret. Avoid the Hitech.

I think a lot of people want to use a grad with this kind of filter, because they both suit seascapes very well. BluTack on top seems like the best idea, although I'm thinking of getting my grad cut circular and putting in a mount so I can fit the ND500 in front of that.
Click to expand...

nd grad, of course. never thought of that
let me know how you go on if you manage to cut a grad into a circular one
 
Problem with cutting a grad into a circular one, is that your pictures then dictate where you have the grad in the shot. If you made it so that grad started halfway (if its a hard grad), then its always got to be halfway, hence the versatility of square filters.
 
rob13 said:
Problem with cutting a grad into a circular one, is that your pictures then dictate where you have the grad in the shot. If you made it so that grad started halfway (if its a hard grad), then its always got to be halfway, hence the versatility of square filters.
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Well yes, but square filters are also difficult with this application as you have to seal them from light entering from the side, because of the huge relative difference between the ambient light and what is actually going through the lens. The Lee BigStopper gets around with with a thin foam gasket, but you then have the problem of sealing the grad too, or you get reflections inbetween them.

There are various ways around it, but none of them ideal. To be honest I think that rather than mess about with a flawed solution with the grad, I'll just try to optimise the exposure with a view to making something of it as best I can in post processing.

In practice you get a bit of a grad-like effect anyway, caused by the heavy optical vignetting when shooting with a wide angle, which I usually do. What happens with a wide lens is that at the edges of the frame the lens is looking through the filter at an angle, so it is effectively thicker and therefore darker. The corners can be more than two stops under exposed with a super-wide :eek:

So there's a bit of jiggery pokery that usually has to be done in post anyway, and with this in mind it's important to give it as much exposure as possible, ie expose to the right technique, in order to pull those darker corners up without too much noise.
 
rob13 said:
They are stunning peter, did you do much colour correction to them?
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Rob, I did not adjust the white balance in any of these. I did some minor adjustments with saturation, contrast and sharpness in DPP, other than that, it was more or less what you get with the lightcraft 9 stop nd, and in some of them a Hitech nd grad was used also.

Thanks
Peter
 
rob13 said:
Was it blue tac right around the filter to keep the grad in place?
Click to expand...

Rob,

I just used a small piece on the left and right sides to get the nd grad to stick in front of the already attached lightcraft filter. There is always a risk the blu tac can come lose and the filter fall off, but my filters are plastic type (Hitech) and are replaceable at about £13, if they were to scratch badly. Not happened so far, and I reckon worth the risk, rather than trying to find a filter holder that does not cause vignetting.

Peter
 
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