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Author Topic: Is it time for more innovation from makers of filters?  (Read 1534 times)

dreed

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Is it time for more innovation from makers of filters?
« on: June 25, 2011, 12:03:47 am »

The makers of lens filters have been hit hard because the only products people are buying now are polarizers and neutral density filters.

In the latter case, there are:
* solid shading across the entire filter
* soft separation
* hard separation
and then the different levels of shading.

Is that the limit of variations that are useful?

For example, what about ND filters that work opposite to vignetting where the centre is darker than the outside?

Or what about an ND filter where there's a single strip across the centre that is darker?

What other variations on ND filters are worthwhile?
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elf

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Re: Is it time for more innovation from makers of filters?
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2011, 09:06:26 pm »

For example, what about ND filters that work opposite to vignetting where the centre is darker than the outside?

These are very common filters :)
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Scott O.

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Re: Is it time for more innovation from makers of filters?
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2011, 11:18:26 am »

Certainly innovation is possible in filter construction, but what would the market be?  The reason everyone makes ND and polarizing filters is that is what is selling.  Manufacturers are not going into production on a product that isn't likely to sell...

JeffKohn

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Re: Is it time for more innovation from makers of filters?
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2011, 12:49:59 pm »

For example, what about ND filters that work opposite to vignetting where the centre is darker than the outside?
These exist, they're called center-spot filters and are pretty common in the large-format world. They don't make much sense for SLR lenses though, because to be useful they have to be lens-specific and besides most SLR lenses don't have much vignetting (not nearly as much as wideangle LF lenses, anyways).

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Or what about an ND filter where there's a single strip across the centre that is darker?
Singh-Ray has some "reverse grad" filters that are similar to what you describe, with the darkest portion in the center and then getting gradually lighter towards the edge. Useful for shooting with the sun close to the horizon so that you don't over-darken the sky above.

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What other variations on ND filters are worthwhile?
Honestly I don't find ND filters useful at all for digital, and never use them. Some will argue that "getting it right in the camera" in one shot is ideal, but the truth is digital blending of bracketed shots can usually produce better results because you're not limited to having a straight-line boundary with a uniform transition from light to dark. There are just too many compositions where the grad filter will darken things that shouldn't be darkened and the result look unnatural.
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Jeff Kohn
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jonathanlung

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Re: Is it time for more innovation from makers of filters?
« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2011, 09:50:28 pm »

I'm not sure how hard hit those filter makers are... with the popularity of digital interchangeable lens cameras, declining sales of colour filters is probably partly offset by people buying UV filters for protection (not trying to start a religious war, here) for myriad filter sizes.

Some will argue that "getting it right in the camera" in one shot is ideal
I'm not going to argue that :)
But there are at least two uses of ND filters that can't generally be easily emulated in post: using ND filters to allow long exposures and trying to stay within flash sync speed limits while trying to use a wide aperture.

I don't know if there's a filter you can use to add vignetting rather than doing it in post, but you can just stack a whole bunch of filters (with the glass removed) for the same effect.
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JeffKohn

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Re: Is it time for more innovation from makers of filters?
« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2011, 10:44:53 pm »

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But there are at least two uses of ND filters that can't generally be easily emulated in post: using ND filters to allow long exposures and trying to stay within flash sync speed limits while trying to use a wide aperture.
Agreed, solid ND filters are useful in some cases and I do have one. I should have clarified I was talking about graduated ND filters with that statement.
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Jeff Kohn
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