Graduated ND filters and the M8?

[Gentleman Villain]

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Well said Chris - I really don't see grad filters on the lens as 'purist' at all. It's the least pure and most compromised way of doing it.

 

Good, then don't use them

[tashley]

Good, then don't use them

 

I will follow your advice to the letter! In fact I'm going to put all my Lee stuff on eBay when I get a moment....

[andit]

The main reason that we used to use grad ND filters was to bring down the highlights in a scene to accommodate the exposure latitude of film.

 

If I recall right, slide film had an exposure latitude of about 3 stops (-2 to +1). Print film had about 5 (-2 to +3), B&W film had extreme exposure latitude with up to 9 stops (-4 to +5). If you had a scene that fell outside of this, you would either blow the highlights or the shades would turn to mud. Thus you made use of the grad ND filter to bring down the highlights to fit in with the film type - or special effects, I seem to recall using a grad ND Tobacco filter to warm up the skies.

 

The digital sensor handles about 7 stops (+2 to -5) - I have not done any scientific testing on this figure - but seems pretty close. It is amazing how much information is stored in dark area's of your image. Thus meter for the highlights and use PS to recover the dark area's. I still have all my filters, but have not tried a grad ND on my M8 yet. I have used my polarizing filter, coupled with an 81A filter a couple of times though and found the results very similar to when using slide film.

 

Andreas

[vanhulsenbeek]

The main reason that we used to use grad ND filters was to bring down the highlights in a scene to accommodate the exposure latitude of film. .................... I have used my polarizing filter, coupled with an 81A filter a couple of times though and found the results very similar to when using slide film.

 

That is also my experience: see here, bringing back Velvia memories:

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/landscape-travel/73545-caribean-polarizer.html#post762288

The use of Grad's I am not so sure of. Would be fidgety anyway and only work really well when using a tripod.

[gwelland]

Since we're talking about using the M8 which although it does have a pretty decent dynamic range, it doesn't match that of something as exotic as a P45+ digital back. In this context it is sometimes necessary to reign in the extremes of DR either through the use of blending exposures or GND filters. Any other approach is a compromise that at best will be creating or discarding pixel information (double processing of RAW etc). If the highlights are blown or the shadows are completely blocked up then there's not much you can do to get back true image information.

 

If you want to use GND's for artistic purposes then I'd definitely agree that the infinite capabilities of a software solution such as Lightroom's soft filter or PS techniques are better.

[tashley]

Since we're talking about using the M8 which although it does have a pretty decent dynamic range, it doesn't match that of something as exotic as a P45+ digital back.

 

You'd be surprised: the P45+ has an advertised DR of 12 stops (at one time they were claiming 15, don't know what happened there...) whereas the M8 tests on DXO mark at 11.... though I have to admit the difference does seem greater than that to me.