Graduated filter or not ?

Terry Breedlove · Sep 3, 2016

OK so I am getting back into film shooting big time and I have set up a darkroom again and all that. I am very experienced with film and darkroom work but it has been so long since I was full tilt. shooting digital and photoshop for portraits since about 2004 almost exclusively . Now I am getting back into scenics with B&W film and mostly my Hasselblad. Question is do i really need a graduated ND filter all that much. I have noticed I tend to shoot at times and in the direction where it isn't that much of a help. Nothing I can't get past with a little dark room work. I am asking because I am getting ready for a photo road trip of a couple weeks in duration. I am thinking about buying one but at 100 plus dollars do I really need to spend the money. I can and I will most likely but I hate to spend money on something i might not end up using that much. I have a Red filter perhaps a Yellow or Orange filter would be money better spent . I hope to get some good input and sure appreciate the help.

By the way I spent some time in the Darkroom last night just playing and experimenting. Using the split contrast filter technique something I haven't done since 1997 ! I did a little dodging was well. I am in love with photography again.

Maris · Sep 3, 2016

I've accumulated a lot of plastic filters in the "Cokin P" size including grad ND, grad red, grad blue, and most of the single colours, red, orange, yellow, blue, green, etc. They have all come from China via eBay and none of them cost more than $10. For black and white landscape work on large format and roll film the most used filter is red with grad red in second place. For portraits the light yellow gets some use. These cheap filters work well if unscratched and kept shaded from direct sunlight during exposure. I'm glad I didn't pay $100ea for all those colours I thought I needed but don't use.

Terry Breedlove · Sep 3, 2016

They can be spendy. I use the B+W filters and they have been good to me for many years. I don't mind spending money on good products because I do use them a lot and for a long time. Here is the filter

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/856179-REG/B_W_66_1067370_67mm_702_Graduated_0_6.html

Bill Burk · Sep 3, 2016

I have a set of graduated neutral density filters I occasionally use with slide film, but I haven't used them yet when shooting black and white negatives.

So I would vote for "you don't really need them" for black and white. Though I appreciate Maris' opinion, so you might give it a try.

Paul Howell · Sep 3, 2016

I use yellow and orange graduated filters for black and white, at least here in the desert with such bright sky I find them to be use full.

Terry Breedlove · Sep 3, 2016

I am headed for the desert I think I agree with black and white film I don't really need a graduated filter so I will not waste the money. Film has so much dynamic range and I can expose and keep what I need for a print.

Patrick Robert James · Sep 3, 2016

ND graduated filters were great with transparency film and sometimes for color neg. For black and white, not so much. Anyway, you wouldn't want a round grad like the B+W to which you linked since you couldn't adjust it. The sliding ones, like Cokin or better, Tiffen, were the ones to buy.

You might want to consider a polarizer though. I have shot a lot out in the West and from time to time a polarizer stacked with a color filter after it really opened up the sky. A polarizer and a red filter will make the blue part of the sky black.

Hope that helps you Terry, and don't forget to post your images when you get back! You might also post where you are planning to go so you can get some tips....

Terry Breedlove · Sep 3, 2016

Patrick Robert James said:
Hope that helps you Terry, and don't forget to post your images when you get back! You might also post where you are planning to go so you can get some tips....

I have a polarizing filter and a red filter and a 10 stop ND filter. I will be posting images when I get back and start printing a few. Starting in Glacier national park, hitting salt lake, Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon, Grand Canyon and then over to Death Valley. Up to Yosemite and the Red woods and then headed home. Making a huge circle.

mr rusty · Sep 4, 2016

Personally I find a soft grad useful. So many shots include sky, and I find it helps to get the cloud features exposed better, otherwise the risk is always well exposed foreground and white sky. I find it difficult to burn in sky because unless you have a very straight horizon inevitably any features along the transition get over burned. And sometimes a shot comes along that without a grad it just wouldn't work. (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

RalphLambrecht · Sep 4, 2016

Terry Breedlove said:
OK so I am getting back into film shooting big time and I have set up a darkroom again and all that. I am very experienced with film and darkroom work but it has been so long since I was full tilt. shooting digital and photoshop for portraits since about 2004 almost exclusively . Now I am getting back into scenics with B&W film and mostly my Hasselblad. Question is do i really need a graduated ND filter all that much. I have noticed I tend to shoot at times and in the direction where it isn't that much of a help. Nothing I can't get past with a little dark room work. I am asking because I am getting ready for a photo road trip of a couple weeks in duration. I am thinking about buying one but at 100 plus dollars do I really need to spend the money. I can and I will most likely but I hate to spend money on something i might not end up using that much. I have a Red filter perhaps a Yellow or Orange filter would be money better spent . I hope to get some good input and sure appreciate the help.

By the way I spent some time in the Darkroom last night just playing and experimenting. Using the split contrast filter technique something I haven't done since 1997 ! I did a little dodging was well. I am in love with photography again.

I find a grad really useful to control bright skies,especially when contrast filters don't seem to be enough but they also work well in combination with contrast filters.Yes,well worth having.

DREW WILEY · Sep 7, 2016

So far, I've yet to see a grad shot that didn't somehow look fake. That includes the numerous ones done by a fellow whose name is on a particular brand. Maybe somebody can get it right. I have no interest in them. There are better ways to tame film.

mr rusty · Sep 8, 2016

didn't somehow look fake

That's a fair comment in a way. Of course, using filters is "fake" in that use can be recognised as a manipulation to change the image as it would have been without. But no more "fake" than Ansels careful use of dodging and burning to create the image he wanted from the raw negative. Photographers manipulate raw light to create "art" in many ways. Some we like some we don't. Like HDR which I detest.

LAG · Sep 8, 2016

Excuse me Terry

Terry Breedlove said:
Now I am getting back into scenics with B&W film and mostly my Hasselblad. Question is do i really need a graduated ND filter all that much. I have noticed I tend to shoot at times and in the direction where it isn't that much of a help.

It seems you have enough answers but if I can tell you my own personal opinion and to make it simple, basing on the facts described in your OP: I'd not buy that "expensive" filter, so you can save those 100 dollars, or at least part of them ... I mean, you have lots of alternatives to that filter, both inside and outside the darkroom. That being said, you should, however, have some filters anyway, specially when working mostly with B&W, but that's another story.

I'm glad to hear, you are falling in love with (film) Photography again. That love should never have been gone.

Best of luck!

Terry Breedlove · Sep 8, 2016

I agree I won't buy it to be honest it just hasn't been a problem for me.

DREW WILEY · Sep 8, 2016

Well, dodging and burning can be done quite specifically, and darkroom unsharp masking can be done very very precisely. Grads only give linear
general control, and just one more gadget to get dirty or scratched in the mtns or desert. I cut my teeth on large format chromes for big Cibachromes, and never found em necessary, much less for b&w negs. If someone finds em fun, more power to them. I'm just sick of instantly spotting imagery addicted to them, along with the usual sticky-sweet color hypersaturtion of current genre.

cliveh · Sep 8, 2016

I would suggest a graduated filter is a pretentious manipulation of a scene which destroys its original integrity of tonal balance and as such should be resigned to the waste bin.

tomfrh · Sep 8, 2016

cliveh said:
I would suggest a graduated filter is a pretentious manipulation of a scene which destroys its original integrity of tonal balance

Ouch!

I find they can be useful with slide film for when you want to photograph land and sky at same time. Otherwise black land or white sky!

tomfrh · Sep 8, 2016

Patrick Robert James said:
Anyway, you wouldn't want a round grad like the B+W to which you linked since you couldn't adjust it.

I bought a round one not realising you couldn't adjust it (not sure how it didn't occur to me, but it didn't!).

I found it pretty well useless in practice... The rectangular slidey ones are better

Poisson Du Jour · Sep 8, 2016

Never used them, not once. I do pass them on my way in and out of two dealers I regularly visit; some, like the Fomat Hi Tech Schott-glass filters, cost around $600+. It seems they have an enthusiastic following among cashed-up digibois. And, given their cost and fraility, imagine how you would feel if it slipped from your paws and shattered... Anyways, master the techniques of multispot metering and balancing.

Terry Breedlove · Sep 8, 2016

tomfrh said:
I bought a round one not realising you couldn't adjust it (not sure how it didn't occur to me, but it didn't!).

I found it pretty well useless in practice... The rectangular slidey ones are better

Do you mean can't adjust it up and down ? Just turn it to get it even right but yea the square ones like the Lee would be more adjustable.

tomfrh · Sep 8, 2016

Terry Breedlove said:
Do you mean can't adjust it up and down ?

Yes.

You can't align a circular ND with the horizon. The grad line is fixed within the frame.

LAG · Sep 9, 2016

cliveh said:
I would suggest a graduated filter is a pretentious manipulation of a scene which destroys its original integrity of tonal balance and as such should be resigned to the waste bin.

No offense intended cliveh

That is a worthy of esteem suggestion, based on a fundamental Photographic misconception.

cliveh · Sep 9, 2016

LAG said:
No offense intended cliveh

That is a worthy of esteem suggestion, based on a fundamental Photographic misconception.

And no offense taken.

Graduated filter or not ?

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