Why Neutral Density Filters?

bags27 · Feb 21, 2024

Well, obviously to increase exposure time, especially when shooting wide open.

But I see photos on Flickr in which ND 10 filters are used on HB Zeiss lenses, not to blur falling water, not to produce star trails. But just as a way to...what? increase film saturation? I dunno. Do I have this wrong or am I missing something? Why else might one use a ND filter for? Thanks!

Dan Daniel · Feb 21, 2024

People use them to turn a lake or body of water into a flat surface.

And they are used for urban scenes as a way to eliminate or reduce humans- people just move along and are too small in time/light to register.

Hassasin · Feb 21, 2024

Can get rid of moving subjects from the scene, subjects that were moving across the frame, but never had enough "air time" for the exposure given to actually record, or not fully, so the scene can be made almost surreal in some cases.

Chan Tran · Feb 21, 2024

I can't bring myself to use an ND filter because the 50mm f/1.8 is $120 and the 50mm f/1.4 is $400 and it's not sharper than the f/1.8 only 2/3 stop faster and for almost 3 times the price. It's way too much money wasted to put ND filter on the lens.

MattKing · Feb 21, 2024

Sometimes, we have very specific needs in order to achieve a planned/visualized photo or "look".
We need a slow shutter speed in order to give a sense of motion, and we need a large aperture to achieve the desired shallow depth of field.
And we have 400 ISO film in the camera for the hoped-for grain.
The solution? ND filters.
Most likely, much of the current popularity of ND filters comes from the current popularity of shallow depth of field, combined with the relatively less common availability of slower films.

Dan Fromm · Feb 21, 2024

Hmm. Once upon a time I photographed flowers with a Nikon (flash sync speed 1/250), any of several MicroNikkors, and ISO 25 Kodachrome. Flash illumination overpowered ambient light to give me full control of lighting, stopped motion (mine and the flower's) and let me use reasonable apertures. That was then. Nowadays digital SLRs typically have minimum ISO = 100. This forces me to (a) use a smaller aperture than desirable (diffraction is real) or use an ND filter to, in effect, reduce the camera's ISO to 25. There's another use for ND filters. I miss KM.

I now have a DSLR whose ISO setting can be dialed down to 32, problem solved.

pentaxuser · Feb 21, 2024

bags27 said:
Well, obviously to increase exposure time, especially when shooting wide open.

But I see photos on Flickr in which ND 10 filters are used on HB Zeiss lenses, not to blur falling water, not to produce star trails. But just as a way to...what? increase film saturation? I dunno. Do I have this wrong or am I missing something? Why else might one use a ND filter for? Thanks!

Was there nothing about these photos on Flickr that you could see that made it obvious to you why ND 10 filters were used i.e. did they all look as if the same photo could have been produced without any ND filter?

pentaxuser

250swb · Feb 22, 2024

You shouldn't necessarily see the effect of an ND filter, not like 'look at me!' as with one of those flat calm sea pictures. But rather interpret what the photographer is photographing and imagine why they may use one, and imagination is a key tool in photography, like wanting to use very shallow DOF etc. That is not to say idiots can't just stick them on the lens and leave them there, but then why would they crow about it?

ic-racer · Feb 22, 2024

Almost all my ND filters are for 8mm, 16mm or Minox photography. The tiny focal length lenses in these formats are very susceptible to obvious diffraction when stopping down. Except for the Minox, in which case Walter did not allow it, so ND is built into the camera.

Romanko · Feb 22, 2024

ND filters can be useful with old cameras that have a limited number of shutter speeds, for example just 1/25 and 1/75 in some Voigtländer cameras from the 1930s. A variable density ND and fast film make them more usable.

Trail Images · Feb 22, 2024

I use 2 & 3 stop Singh Ray in both soft & hard stops. I also use the ND filters in NIK software for post processing. I do use Hi Tech reverse ND filters when shooting directly towards a sunrise or sunsets during horizon transition times.
Like all the gear, they're helpful tools to "TRY" and obtain the best image possible with drastic illumination differences. .

pentaxuser · Feb 22, 2024

250swb said:
You shouldn't necessarily see the effect of an ND filter, not like 'look at me!' as with one of those flat calm sea pictures. But rather interpret what the photographer is photographing and imagine why they may use one, and imagination is a key tool in photography, like wanting to use very shallow DOF etc. That is not to say idiots can't just stick them on the lens and leave them there, but then why would they crow about it?

So can you give any examples of photos where you might not see the effect of an ND 10 filter where you can work out that one was used by interpreting that one had to be used to get the effect? In asking this question I am assuming that the OP would know that total absence of people and/ or vehicles would be obvious to the OP as well so discounting that aspect of being able to interpret fairly easily what the photographer was trying to achieve I just wonder what he saw that made the OP wonder what the point of the 10 ND filter was.

Just looking for info here on what it might have been that the OP saw that made him wonder what the point of the 10 ND was. He has yet to reply. Perhaps it will become clearer then why the OP asked the question he did

pentaxuser

Sirius Glass · Feb 22, 2024

I use a ND2 filter with my WideLux F7 which has the fastest shutter speed of 1/250 second at f/11 as Sunny 16 with ISO 400 film.

eli griggs · Feb 23, 2024

The Hasselblad "V" series C, CF, CFi lenses have a top speed of 1/500s of a second and I find that for ordinary photography, they are often the differance between geting the shot or not.

Using so many analog cameras with slow shutter speeds makes, IMO, ND filters a smart choice for any bag.

250swb · Feb 23, 2024

pentaxuser said:
So can you give any examples of photos where you might not see the effect of an ND 10 filter where you can work out that one was used by interpreting that one had to be used to get the effect? In asking this question I am assuming that the OP would know that total absence of people and/ or vehicles would be obvious to the OP as well so discounting that aspect of being able to interpret fairly easily what the photographer was trying to achieve I just wonder what he saw that made the OP wonder what the point of the 10 ND filter was.

Just looking for info here on what it might have been that the OP saw that made him wonder what the point of the 10 ND was. He has yet to reply. Perhaps it will become clearer then why the OP asked the question he did

pentaxuser

I did give an example, maybe you skipped it. To remind you I mentioned using shallow DOF, so if you look at the photo and it's sunlight, the film is grainy (so fast) and it's clearly all background blur, and the photographer posts in the caption a name, maybe something like 'Noctilux', you could perhaps make a guess an ND filter was used without it being stated. The absence of vehicles or people could simply be 'the absence of vehicles and people', you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out. On the other hand if there is a white fluffy cumulus cloud that appears to be streaking across the sky at 1000 mph in an otherwise still landscape you may also suspect an ND filter could have been used. Got it yet?

pentaxuser · Feb 23, 2024

250swb said:
I did give an example, maybe you skipped it. To remind you I mentioned using shallow DOF, so if you look at the photo and it's sunlight, the film is grainy (so fast) and it's clearly all background blur, and the photographer posts in the caption a name, maybe something like 'Noctilux', you could perhaps make a guess an ND filter was used without it being stated. The absence of vehicles or people could simply be 'the absence of vehicles and people', you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out. On the other hand if there is a white fluffy cumulus cloud that appears to be streaking across the sky at 1000 mph in an otherwise still landscape you may also suspect an ND filter could have been used. Got it yet?

Thanks, so was the example you gave a written example in your earlier post or one from the many flickr stock and if so which one or ones?

If it was the written example then yes that was obvious to me as well but whatever the OP saw and from what he saw then couldn't see the point of using a 10ND filter was what I was trying to find out about. I was simply trying to help the OP by initially fidnign out exactly what it was he had a problem with? It may be that his opinion on the uses of ND filter is simply that they are not needed in the photos he has seen perception and if he shows us what he saw we may agree with him. On the other hand it may be that there will be something in what he shows that we can point to that helps him see what the photographer was trying to achieve but as I say until he responds we won't know if we can help or otherwise

pentaxuser

guangong · Feb 23, 2024

ic-racer said:
Almost all my ND filters are for 8mm, 16mm or Minox photography. The tiny focal length lenses in these formats are very susceptible to obvious diffraction when stopping down. Except for the Minox, in which case Walter did not allow it, so ND is built into the camera.

View attachment 363633

In addition to Minox cameras, I use ND filters primarily with movie cameras since a fixed shutter speed often requires an ND filter to retain desired f stop. Some Super 8:cameras have a built in ND filter.

Eff64 · Feb 23, 2024

Outside on a sunny day, maybe you don’t want to shoot 1/500 at f/16. Use a 2 or 3 stop ND and that aperture can be 8 or 5.6. Or maybe you want to be at 1/250, f/11 or f/8. That’s how they can be useful.

250swb · Feb 24, 2024

pentaxuser said:
Thanks, so was the example you gave a written example in your earlier post or one from the many flickr stock and if so which one or ones?

If it was the written example then yes that was obvious to me as well but whatever the OP saw and from what he saw then couldn't see the point of using a 10ND filter was what I was trying to find out about. I was simply trying to help the OP by initially fidnign out exactly what it was he had a problem with? It may be that his opinion on the uses of ND filter is simply that they are not needed in the photos he has seen perception and if he shows us what he saw we may agree with him. On the other hand it may be that there will be something in what he shows that we can point to that helps him see what the photographer was trying to achieve but as I say until he responds we won't know if we can help or otherwise

pentaxuser

Maybe it's a complaint of the modern age, but people generally don't interpret photographs anymore. Some scarcely believe they've made their own photograph without an EXIF file to back it up. They are afraid of making a best guess to which lens or focal length they may have used, so they leave software to substitute for memory, and while some things you can't know in viewing the photograph many things about it can often be interpreted given experience. Your average camera club competition is made up of judges saying 'shouldn't have done this, or well done for doing that' by which they look at a photo and know where it's negatives and pluses are before handing out the points. It's the same 'judgement' that can be made looking at other peoples photo's to try and understand them without having to interrogate the photographer. It's a casual thing, you shouldn't need to sign a declaration, but by using experience you can make a best guess if it's important to know.

Why Neutral Density Filters?

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