Haida ND 4.5 – 15 stop ND filter

THE BIG BIG BIG STOPPER

If static and dynamic elements come together in a scene, one can create eyecatching effects in an image by slowing down the shutter speed. Moving clouds appear as washed out stripes in the sky and waves turn into softened mist. In landscape photography ND 1.8 (6 stops) and ND 3.0 (10 stops) filters are very popular because in twilight situations or when the sun is low on the horizon they deliver appropriate exposure times in the lower range of minutes. My preferred filter supplier HAIDA has recently started to sell an ND filter with incredible 15 stops of light reduction (ND 4.5 or 32000x). This filter is intended for use in bright daylight, as by example it extends the exposure time of 1/125 second to  4 minutes and 22 seconds.
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New Nisi 150mm Square Polarizer for the Lee SW-150 Holder

Nisi Cavision 150mm PolarizerI have recently written an article about how to use a polarizer with the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 and the Lee SW-150 holder. The drawback was the limited selection of polarizers. The only available CPL at this time was the Cavision which is rather expensive and inconvinient to use at it is 4mm thick.

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Using Filters on the Nikon 14–24mm f/2.8

Lee SW-150 Filter Holder

You want to shoot the stellar Nikon 14-24 mm f/2.8 for serious landscape work with filters? You want to use graduated neutral density filters, neutral density filters up to 10 stops and polarizing filters at the same time? And you want to shoot all these 3 filters without any lens flare issues? This is the complete guide how it works!

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Lee Little Stopper Review

Lee Little Stopper Test TitelA few weeks after I published my ND Filter comparison test Lee Filters launched the Little Stopper ND 1.8 (6 stop) filter. Although I am extremely happy with my Haida filters I was curious how the Little Stopper compares to the previously reviewed filters.  So I went out again to shoot some images with the following square ND filters:

  • Lee Filters Little Stopper 100 x 100mm ND 1.8 glass filter
  • Haida ND 1.8 64x 100mm x 100mm glass filter
  • Formatt Hitech ProStop IRND 1.8 100mm x 100mm resin filter

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ND-Filter review: Lee Big Stopper / Formatt Hitech ProStop IRND / Haida

Lee Big Stopper, Haida, Formatt Hitech ND Filter TestNeutral density filters (also called ND filters or greyfilters) are an indispensable tool for achieving special visual effects in landscape photography. Exposure times can be significantly extended and moving image content becomes washed out. With ND filters you can blur moving water, passing clouds can be turned fuzzy and long exposure times may even eliminate moving people from the scene.

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Exposure calculation for the Lee Big Stopper

Exposure Table for the Lee Filters Big Stopper

When using my Lee Big Stopper 10 stop neutral density filter I noticed several times that the calculated theoretical exposure time always resulted in slightly underexposed shots. Lee Filters themselves mentioned that the filters are within a certain tolerance and do not darken to exactly 10 stops.

I have calibrated my Big Stopper and came to the conclusion that my filter darkens exactly 10.5 stops. This seemingly small variance has a significant impact in practice. I will give you a short example. In a low light evening shot where the right exposure time is 1/8th of a second, the calculated prolonged exposure time with a 10 stop filter is 02:08 minutes. With my filter darkening 10.5 stops i have to expose for 03:01 minutes to get to the same histogram. The effect is even greater (difference in seconds) at longer exposure time without filter.

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