What are ND Filters good for ?

First of all let’s start by explaining what Neutral Density Filters or short ND Filters actually do. Probably most of you have heard about them but here is a short run down anyway : They are amazing to have long time exposures in bright Daylight. This can create dramatic effects, smooth out water or add movement into clouds for example. Essentially you are putting sunglasses in front of your camera lens in order to reduce the light that hits it.

ND Filter come in different strength and can reduce the light from 1 stop all the way up to 15 stops (or even more if you stack more than one filter).

Long exposure of a Waterfall

Filter System vs. Normal Filters

ND Filters come usually in sets like this one below from Tiffen and you simply screw them in front of your lens. These come in all normal lens diameter sizes.

While they are affordable and great to play around with long exposures, they have a few critical issues :

You need a set for each lens diameter you want to use, which means you can end up with a lot of these filters you need to carry around.

They often come with lower quality glass, which affects your image quality

They are hard to get on and off the lens, which becomes annoying if you work with very strong ND filters, because you can barely see through them. That means for every composition or focus change you need to take the filter off and put it back on, which quickly gets old.

The alternative is to use a professional grade filter system. A system comes with a frame you attach to the front of your lens and looks like this :

The main advantage is an easier workflow and that you can use the same filters on any type or size of lens, because the system uses a frame you can attach to any lens by adapter rings.

What do you need to get started?

Understanding what you all need to get started can be intimidating and full sets can cost easily 900$. But to get started you really don’t need that much. The Lee Filter System is my personal system of choice and is used by many professionals. To get started you need the Lee Foundation Kit for 80$, a 10 Stop ND Filter for 125$ (10 Stop as it works great for high F-Stop landscape work in bright daylight) and an adapter ring for each lens you want to use with the system. The adapter rings come in a standard and wide angle version to avoid vignetting. Honestly I’d only buy the wide angle rings and ignore the standard ones right away.

Once you have all these components you have all you need to get started, but the really great thing is, as you advance your photography — you can grow the system and add for example soft graduated filters or a polarizer and many more items to it and grow it.

Enjoy taking great long exposures!

For more information http://www.leefilters.com/index.php/camera/system

Disclaimer: I’m not paid or sponsored by Lee Filters