Hot Mirror/IRND/Mirror ND Filter Matrix [Parts 1-4]

[Adrian T.]

To accentuate the color shift happening with the filters I punched that up to 2, it's highest setting.

You can actually go much higher by typing the value into the appropriate field.

[Anders Yarbrough]

Would you mind posting a pic of the tiffen/rosco/schnieder @ 1.3? Not to nit pick, just wondering if a mountain is being made of a molehill....

[Evin Grant]

Part 2: IR Cut test

Before I start please let me give special shout out to Lite panels who graciously provided a special IR Lite Panel for this test.
http://www.litepanels.com

This was a very simple yet telling test. The IR Lite Panel is a small IR light source, it is invisible to the naked eye when on but produces a strong response on the Red One. Even with no ND in front of the camera it's very visible.
In order to have a true side by side comparison we, did, well... a side by side comparison...

First the IRND filters...


It's pretty obvious from the first frames that Tiffen's IRNDs are not really any improvement over the standard NDs. The Pancros are interesting because they seem to attenuate the IR in exactly the same amount as the visible.
The Pancros do seem to be doing a better job than the IRNDs over all.

Second, the Hot Mirrors


This test was very interesting, although the Schneider has the most impressive looking coating it is the weakest at blocking the IR spectrum.
The Tiffen comes in second with a respectable showing but the heavy weight champion is the Rosco TruColor which practically turns off the IR Lite Panel!
I also threw in the Pancro becasue it is kind of a mirror just not hot. It attenuates a bit but not as much as he HMs, you can see the Rosco + Tiffen ND 1.2 really doing the deed here. More on what this means in part 3.

Even the Nikon D3 has some IR sensitivity but not up to the Red One...

[Frank Weeks]

Very nice work Evin. Thanks for all your time.

wow. I ordered the Rosco a while back and feel really good about it now

[MikeHedge]

wow so... buy Rosco?

[Evin Grant]

I don't really understand your question. Do you want me to grab a frame of the three filters at T1.3? What would that accomplish? This particular part of the test is not about IR per say, it's about the off axis, visible light color properties specific to the Hot Mirror filter designs. Anyway I only own T2.1 lenses so your out of luck on that.

Does this help at all?

[Evin Grant]

Hold your horses guys, if you've ordered the Rosco already don't cancel, but if you haven't, wait till the field test and the conclusion before you dive in. It gets even more interesting.

[Steve Murray]

Great job Evin -- as always. Thanks for taking your time to do this. Can't wait to see how the Pancro 1.2 & 1.5 look.

Thanks again.

[Stacey Spears]

Great stuff!

Is one of them the tiffen HMIRND combo?

[Joel Kaye]

Hold your horses guys, if you've ordered the Rosco already don't cancel, but if you haven't, wait till the field test and the conclusion before you dive in. It gets even more interesting.

What a tease! Thanks for the great test Evin. Very informative.