How to use GND Filters in Landscape Photography

in #photofeed6 years ago

When I bought my first Graduated Neutral Density Filters more than seven years ago I had no idea which filters to buy. There are 1-stop (0.3), 2-stop (0.6), 3-stop (0.9) and even 4-stop (1.2) filters. And those are available as hard, soft, medium and reverse versions.

Such filters are expensive and, if I had believed some online resources, I would have had to buy a complete series of filters to be able to deal with all the different lighting situations.

Which GND Filters to buy

The first filter I bought though was a 0.6 hard GND. And it was a good start and didn’t leave too big of a hole in my wallet. But for many situations it wasn’t enough - especially for those where I photographed into the direction of the rising or setting sun.

In addition the hard grad is not ideal for mountainous terrain or in general for scenes where the horizon isn’t flat. So I saved up a bit more money and bought a 0.9 hard GND for those scenes with the sun in the frame and also a 0.6 soft GND. At some point I even bought a 0.6 reverse Grad because I thought I needed it.

Layers of mountians in the Palatinate Forest in soft morning light

Over the years I have become very experience with those filters. And my arsenal has not grown bigger, instead I reduced the number of GNDs I use to two: the 0.6 hard GND and the 0.6 soft GND. Those two filters are, in my opinion, the most versatile filter set.

How to use GND Filters

I can use either of the two on their own, or, if the light demands it, I can combine them. And I find the combination of a hard grad with a soft grad gives much better results than using a single 3 or 4-stop filter.

In the video below I explain how I decide which of the filters to use and how I combine them.

As you can see it is very easy to use GND filters. There’s no need to do complicated measurements of the light in the foreground and the light in the sky and then deciding which filter to use. The only decision I have to make is which filter to apply first and this happens based on the nature of the horizon. Then this filter is either enough or I add the other one.

And since I’m shooting with a digital camera I don’t need to get the perfect exposure in one frame. I use GND filters to get me as close as possible to it, but for the best result I often use bracketing in addition to filters.

Some people might argue that, if I use bracketing, I wouldn’t have to use filters at all. But I can get much cleaner results when I only have to apply exposure blending to very specific areas of the photo and the use of GND filters helps me to get the right starting material.

Which brand I use

To conclude this article, I also want to share with you the filter brand I'm currently using. Because in addition to all the filter options I talked about above, you now also can choose from many different brands. Seven years ago this was much easier. There were only three major brands available.

But the new diversity in this field has many advantages, because now there's a lot of innovation. Just recently I switched from the well established Lee Filter brand to Kase. Kase is still quite a new player in this field. But as I browsed through their products and watched the videos about those filters, which I found on Youtube, I was very intrigued. I decided to give them a try and since then have never looked back. Below you can see my first impressions video.

In the past months I have used the filters a lot. I had them on a trip to the Seychelles, where I photographed in various lighting and weather conditions. And the filters held up perfectly. I will soon do full review video about them.

Till then I hope this article and the videos helped a bit to demystify the GND filters jungle and showed that you don't need to break your bank to get into the filters game. You can start with a holder and one GND as I did, and then add a second one and maybe a ND filter. Then you'll be flexible enough for most photo shoots.

Michael Breitung Photography

Sort:  

Hi mibreit-photo,

Your post has been upvoted by the Curie community curation project and associated vote trail as exceptional content (human curated and reviewed). Keep creating awesome stuff! Have a great day :)

LEARN MORE: Join Curie on Discord chat and check the pinned notes (pushpin icon, upper right) for Curie Whitepaper, FAQ and most recent guidelines.

Beautiful shot and great layers. Good info on GND filters as well! Resteemed.

Thanks for the resteem :-)

Great post!
I am not a landscape photographer but I do shoot landscapes quite often and the past few weeks I was thinking of getting a filter or two, so your post was just what I needed and right on time!
Thank you very much for sharing all this knowledge!

That layer shot is supreme! Great capture, @mibreit-photo.

Thank you for posting this video 😌
I’ve been trying to figure out which filters to use for quite some time now and watching your video really helped.
Kind regards,
Damijan

Glad I could help :-)

Congratulations! Your image was just posted as a winning one for the daily 7 World's Continent Photo Challenge. See if you can attend the post and answer some of the congratulation comments for your increased engagement. Thank you and have a great day. Tomas

7 World’s Continents Photo Challenge – Australian Monday week #37 – winner announcement!

PS: Great to see who is behind that beautiful pics:)!

if you want me to resteem your post to over 72,500 followers go here https://steemit.com/@a-0-0

World of Photography
>Visit the website<

You have earned 6.50 XP for sharing your photo!

Daily Stats
Daily photos: 1/2
Daily comments: 0/5
Multiplier: 1.30
Block time: 2018-06-03T11:26:00
Account Level: 3
Total XP: 436.14/800.00
Total Photos: 44
Total comments: 18
Total contest wins: 4
And have also received a 1.20 percent upvote.

Follow: @photocontests
Join the Discord channel: click!
Play and win SBD: @fairlotto
Daily Steem Statistics: @dailysteemreport
Learn how to program Steem-Python applications: @steempytutorials
Developed and sponsored by: @juliank

Great article @mibreit-photo

You have been scouted by @promo-mentors. We are a community of new and veteran Steemians and we are always on the look out for promising authors.

I would like to invite you to our discord group https://discord.gg/vDPAFqb.

When you are there send me a message if you get lost! (My Discord name is the same as here on Steemit)



Great post! I will keep following you! Looking forward to new brilliant content like this!

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.35
TRX 0.12
JST 0.040
BTC 70557.88
ETH 3560.83
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.75