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Recommendation for Variable ND?

K

Kyle Kelley

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Hi all,

I've got a shoot coming up in Nigeria that will be run & gun in a pretty fast paced verite doc setting. As such, running around with a matte box and several ND filters is really not an option. Of course the motion mount would be great, but it's out of my budget range. I'm looking to pickup a variable ND filter and don't have time to shoot any tests beforehand as I'm currently in China. Does anyone have any suggestions (preferably something that's available at B&H)? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
 
heliopan worked pretty good for me....

the only caveat is, you still will get hit with IR contamination at darker ND settings....you should be good for about 1/2-3/4 the variND range of the heliopan for an epic M sensor...but in bright sunlight fully dark will have some funky purples coming through

you may want to stack a screw in hot mirror on top of the vari ND for bright sunlight

the epic is a bit different in terms of IR sensitivity and filter fixes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T9u-1Ib6vo
 
Genus is a good one too and readily available. It has a nice little peg that screws into the ring that makes it easy to turn the ring.
 
Check out Kenko (Tokina). Love it. No complaints at all. Read reviews. Kenko claims proprietary process.
 
I was recently looking through all of the old vari ND threads, reading reviews and PMing a bunch of guys here.

I went with Schneider True Match Vari ND because it had the most people backing it. I was also considering the Kenko because a couple guys here praised it highly, but I couldn't find enough people who have used it or any who compared it to Schneider. I'd like to see a test because I don't know which is better. One user told me in a PM that he switched from Schneider to Tiffen vari ND because it has even less color shift. That was surprising. Based on my research, those 3 seem to be the most trusted, or least bashed.

One of the best looking Dragon clips I've seen is:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?117619-Sevens-Sins-A-Dragon-Test-Shoot
So when I read that Vincent used the Schneider on that, it put me at ease, lol.
 
I've used them all and one thing to keep in mind is they definitely effect bokeh often decreasing the contrast and muddying compared to straight ND's. The other thing to watch out for is shooting inside a car. The polarized windows of the car will create some real ugly artifacts. Last is the dreaded cross effect. This happens on wide lenses once you get to the upper limits. Every variable will do this.

While I still use my variable for run n gun, doc, etc for my still lenses, I just ordered a set of (7) straight IR ND from 2filter.com

http://www.2filter.com/faq/tiffen/tiffenirndcamerafilters.html

If it's utmost optical quality you need, variables will disappoint.
 
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