Neutral density grad filters, now what on earths that?
neutral density means there's no colour and it is a
dark filter, but the grad means it has a grodation, there's a transition half way through
the filter into a clear patch, Tom could i borrow one for a sec.
Sure. So i could show the good people, there tom's got one here.
As you can see there's a dark area and then it fades through here
into a sorta clear area and what you do is you put the darker area
over the sky, or the area you wanna darken down, it need not necessarily be
for the sky, you could it for other things
but in this case it's the sky. Let me show you what i mean, let's just pop this,
see if we can get a moody sky with a mr maccy.
Let me see what happens, as i pull this down
here we go, you see that sneaking in, that's grey and darker sky coming down over Tom.
Now use carefully,
in the landscape this can make an enormous difference unfortunately
the sun's just got in which is what always happens when you and I get together
to try and do anything isn't it.
But look Tom, let me hand this over to you because you're the master
you're gonna get a shot say of the windmill, so talk us through what you'd do.
Okay normally what I do is enhance the exposure, you can see
we've got this really bright sky, dark foreground
so by putting this is the slot holder
and we'll just bring this down
over the sky just above the horizon line, Now if we had a bright sunny day
that mill would be lit up nicely and i would probably go to use a soft
gradation, which let me show you the difference. So what you have is this
filter which i have just shown you on Jaynes camera and has got like a
hard line, the gradation is quite servere.
okay there we can see the difference between the two
gradations, that's a big difference, yep. Now in this instance i'm gonna show you the
hard gradation because it's going to be more evident.
And why wouldn't you do it with a soft one in these
conditions? Okay in these conditions you know it's really
flat, er ligthing so we really want it to
accentuate those close clouds, and bring them out a little bit more,
so this wouldn't be quite so servere but in this condition
we're gonna get a bit of a black line on the blades of the windmill.
That's right, yeah. Okay which we wouldn't have with the softer grad but you've gotta do that
in more powerful lighting,
okay. So the trick with you using these is that you have to come down
just above your horizon line and depending on the aperture that you're using,
so if you're using a small aperture that transition is gonna be more evident.
Yeah because, it's witha smaller aperture, you've got a much much
deeper depth of field, it means whats closer to the lens is more in focus
so that transition effect will appear more severe so
like what I normally do is bring it down just over the horizon line
and then back it of just gently a tad, okay? You can also check this in your depth of
field preview.
So i'm just gonna push that button and i can see
that that's just in the right spot. And now if i take a picture.
so is there anything special you need to do with exposure for this kind of thing?
exposures gonna be worked automatically because you're using the matrix metering
in this, okay. It's gonna sit either you've dakened down the sky
and it's bringing the exposure values from your foreground, your sky and
averaging these all out.
so what you're saying is that if somebodys just begining with stuff they
could easily be using
an aperture priority or shutter priority the camera will work it out you
don't have to know about the manual settings to use one
that's right, yeah. Okay okay so you're taking the shot, okay so we've done the shot
now you can see we've got that really great moody sky, that has given a really moody sky
actually.
can you take one with the filter, just so we can show the folks the diffrence.
Yeah, now you can see in the photograph you can hardly see any of the clouds,
the skies washed out yeah okay but by putting that back
it evens the contrast range
out in the scene. There we go
and because the camera is seeing a darker sky it's giving slightly more exposure which
brings up the foreground at the same time
and that's really all there is to a graduated filter isn't it?
It's not that difficult, yeah yeah. So if you wanna have a go with filters this is a
really great place to start because they're not complicated and that's really all
there is to it.
When you buy a lee grad filter you also get a, you get a holder
so that you can slide the filter up and down you dont have to hold it on the front you
can move that gridation about.
you just buy the adapter and according to the lens that you're using
so you screw that on and it just nicely clips on
easy. Isn't he smooth?
You're getting good at this Tom, so there you go
grad filters that's about all there is to say about them, they're great, they make a
difference
if you wanna play filters it's a great place to start in