Grad filters, Hard or Soft?

dnme

Doing a bit of filter window shopping (until next payday). I see a lot of sellers stating that hard grads are the most popular for landscapes. Is this true?

I imagine that with hard grads, you are dealing with a very sudden shift from the ND part to the clear part of the filter. Surely this would only work with landscapes where you have a flat horizon? Are they very unforgiving? I am assuming that soft grads give you more flexibility and room to maneuver even if you have to do a bit of pp afterwards.

What do you think?

deano77777

I ant an expert but yea the hard edge are for where you have a near flat horizon like sea meets sky.
The soft are for more uneven horizons or shots with bright sky that would cause under exposure beside shade area of land say.

I don't have either just full circular ND filters.
Would like to get a hard and grad filter in the future but quite pricey.

Promac

I shoot in Raw and use Lightroom for the grad.

nucker

Promac wrote: »

I shoot in Raw and use Lightroom for the grad.

Yeah so do I, but sometimes it may be better to have physical filters rather than software

The Doktor

I have been using soft grads for a while, and find them better than pp. (maybe cos im crap with photoshop)
From what I can see the hard grads are more for straight horizons.
I decided to just get the soft and id get the hard if i needed them, so far i havent.
But im no expert. Im just learning

ValueInIreland

Typically you use Hard grads for Seascapes and Soft grads for most other situations. Soft grads are more popular by a factor of about 2 - 1.

ratsam

I wrote a detailed blog post on filter advise a while back which might be of interest to you. I prefer the hard grads for all my work. In fact Lee themselves recommend hards on 35mm sensors and under. I explain all here in my blog...

http://richardhatchphotography.com/2012/01/30/some-basic-filter-advice/

Rats

pixbyjohn

dnme wrote: »

Doing a bit of filter window shopping (until next payday). I see a lot of sellers stating that hard grads are the most popular for landscapes. Is this true?

I imagine that with hard grads, you are dealing with a very sudden shift from the ND part to the clear part of the filter. Surely this would only work with landscapes where you have a flat horizon? Are they very unforgiving? I am assuming that soft grads give you more flexibility and room to maneuver even if you have to do a bit of pp afterwards.

What do you think?

My advice to you is buy the Lee filter kit with a set of ND soft or hard grad, Thats 3 100mm x 150mm filters 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 grad. with the holder and go for the wide angle lens adapter. I bought mine in Barkers, Cork along with the Big Stopper Lee filter. Ordered on a Thursday at 2.30 pm and they were at my door next morning at 09.30. 3 members of our club have them and find them excellent.
http://www.barkerphotographic.ie/search.php?searchname=lee+filters

dnme

Many thanks for the replies. Yea I already have the Lee holder and big stopper waiting for me at the post office. I guess my OP question arose from trying to shop for a more day to day set of filters for the holder on ebay, amazon etc.

ValueInIreland

dnme wrote: »

Many thanks for the replies. Yea I already have the Lee holder and big stopper waiting for me at the post office. I guess my OP question arose from trying to shop for a more day to day set of filters for the holder on ebay, amazon etc.

Once you have used the LEE, you won't want to use any "Lesser" filters....