ND Filters

[Thomas610]

I recently purchased some nd filters and got a chance recently to try them out. I haven't used these before and its going to take me a while to get used to chaging exposures by so many stops depending on the filter used, but that wasn't my main concern. When i put the filter on and look through the viewfinder everything has a strange pink colour, its not so apparent with an ND 2 but if i try an ND 4 or ND 8 its almost purple. These were not expensive filters so is it a poor quality filter or have i used the wrong settings. I was shooting landscape as the sun was starting to set, and i use a Nikon D3000. Any info would be much appreciated, thanks

[alfbranch]

What brand are they?

Do you have any shots to show what the images look like?

[donoreo]

Post some shots. Many ND filters do give a colour cast. This is usually fixed during RAW conversion.

[MattUK]

It's usually due to poor quality filters. As Don says, all but the very best glass filters usually have a blue or pink cast to them. You can correct it if you shoot in RAW using an editing program, to a certain extent

[Thomas610]

Thanks guys for your help I hope to try the filters again and maybe post some shots

[Manamarak]

Hi Thomas,

I've started using filters recently as well and I found some useful information scattered around the interweb which I found useful.

Have a look at these
http://www.all-things-photography.co...c-filters.html
http://www.illustratedphotography.com/basic-photography
http://www.photographers.co.uk/html/...ic-filters.cfm

Hope that helps!

[GeoffWessex]

Sadly, but inevitably, it's the cheapest filters that cause the most trouble with colour casts.... I won't mention the name but they're made in France. All these filters are made in huge batches and if there's a colour cast on one, it's on all of the batch (thousands?) while the next batch can be perfect.

I suppose it could be said that people who use filters (especially the 'Neutral Density' ones) are unlikely to be churing out hundreds of Jpegs by any automated process - far more likely to edit them in small batches (often from Raw) and removing the colour cast is easy enough.

[KeithT]

Ah! that strange pinky colour effect should tell you instantly that you do not have a neutral type filter at all. Neutral means just that - that it won't affect the colour of the image when in use. Sadly, many filter manufacturers call their NDs 'neutral', when in fact they are 'solid grey' or 'grey grads', and that these same manufacturers love to use the term PRO in their marketing to sell them. You need to ask yourself one question: "how many pro photographers use them?" Not that many I would say, and for that reason I would be very careful who you buy them from and that you fully understand what they will give you. It's worth paying a bit more for your filters if you want to achieve the very best from your images.

[donoreo]

Originally Posted by GeoffWessex

Sadly, but inevitably, it's the cheapest filters that cause the most trouble with colour casts.... I won't mention the name but they're made in France. All these filters are made in huge batches and if there's a colour cast on one, it's on all of the batch (thousands?) while the next batch can be perfect.

I suppose it could be said that people who use filters (especially the 'Neutral Density' ones) are unlikely to be churing out hundreds of Jpegs by any automated process - far more likely to edit them in small batches (often from Raw) and removing the colour cast is easy enough.

You can name them, they have been out of stock everywhere for months now anyway

I am pleased with my new Hi-Tech/Formatt ND filter. The quality is much higher than their older cheaper version. My test shots that I posted seemed to mostly be suffering from auto white balance as the colour cast was different from shot to shot. This reminds me, so I have just pulled out my grey card (I won it for answering and being randomly picked on facebook) to put in my bag so I can set the white balance.

[wavemachine]

Got my ND 10 stop hitech filter yesterday and took a few test shots of the clouds in my back garden and have to say I was very pleased with the results. I do have Cokin filters and I don't seem to have any major problems with them but having said that I have read that colour cast can be more of an issue with some batches and when stacking them.

Over time I think I will fork out for a set of Lee filters but 200 notes for the circular polariser on it's own is quite a hefty amounty of dosh but having said that the quality is thereshould avoid a lot of frustration and it should last years.