Which ND filters are useful for beginner long-exposure photography?
Asked 6/27/2022
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I’m new to long-exposure photography and want to shoot scenes like beaches, lightning, fireworks, and other subjects ranging from about 5 seconds to 5 minutes in both daytime and at night. I use a Nikon Z6 on a tripod with a 24mm lens (72mm filter thread) and a 50mm lens (62mm thread). I’ve read that neutral density (ND) filters are especially useful for daytime long exposures and effects like silky water, but I’m not sure which strengths are most practical to start with.
Should a beginner buy screw-in ND filters for specific lenses, or start with a square filter system that can be shared across lenses? Are step-up rings a reasonable option, and what tradeoffs should I expect? Also, at what point do more expensive ND filters stop offering meaningful real-world benefits for someone just getting started?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
4y ago
2 Answers
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There are two kinds of actually useful ND filters, although I'm sure you can find an ND filter with any stop count you want.
One is usually about 16x or 4-stop filter. These are intended for flash photography outdoors in daylight when used with a fast lens. Without flash, in these conditions you would be using a fast exposure time such as 1/8000 to allow using fast lens wide open, but flash sync speed of common shutters are around 1/200 seconds so that won't work without high speed sync flash. It's possible to use a flash that has high speed sync, though. If for example you use 1/3200 second exposure time, this means 1/16 of the shutter is open at a time. High speed sync works by continually feeding bit of power to the flash. The capacitor from which the power is supplied has a limited size. So if 1/16 of the shutter is open at a time, you get only 1/16 of your flash power. Same is true with a 16x 4-stop ND filter: it lets only 1/16 of the flash light through.
My opinion is that if you have the option to use high speed sync, it makes these 16x 4-stop ND filters obsolete.
Another is usually 500x or 1000x, 9-stop or 10-stop filter. These are intended for long exposure photography during daylight hours. A 16x filter wouldn't give you long enough exposure times during sunlight to photograph flowing water in a smooth way. That's why these ND filters let only very minimal amount of light through, only 1/500 or 1/1000 of the light in the scene.
Get a 9 or 10 stop filter. That's what you want for your use case.
With fireworks you probably don't need ND filters though. Fireworks are shot at night, and the fireworks themselves work as the "virtual shutter". Point a camera at fireworks, begin exposure, the fireworks perfectly well expose the sensor with no extra filters required.
For lightning night time you may be able to do without an ND filter, the lightning bolt will be overexposed but that's probably necessary in any case. Daytime lightning, you want to stretch the exposure time as long as you can to maximize your chance of capturing lightning so that's why ND filter with as many stops as you can find (meaning 9-stop or 10-stop filter) is useful or else you'll overexpose the background with exposure times where you maximize your chance of capturing lightning.
Originally by user81735. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user81735
4y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
For your uses, the key filter type is a neutral density (ND) filter. In bright daylight, a moderate ND can help you reach slower shutter speeds for blur, panning, intentional camera movement, or wider apertures. Community answers suggest common useful strengths around 3 stops (8x) and 4 stops (16x) for many daylight situations.
A practical beginner approach is to start with an inexpensive square filter system. It lets you share filters across lenses, stack filters, and later add graduated filters if needed for landscapes. That flexibility is often more valuable early on than buying multiple lens-specific screw-in filters.
Step-up rings are generally a reasonable way to use one larger filter on smaller-thread lenses. The main downside is convenience, and you may not be able to use the lens hood normally. Using a larger filter is generally preferable to step-down rings if you want to avoid vignetting.
As for image quality and price, the answers suggest diminishing returns can come quickly for beginners: cheap filters usually won’t be the main thing limiting your results at first. Experience will tell you which strengths and system suit your shooting before you invest more heavily.
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AI4y ago
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