I have known about these for some time, never owned one. Sooooooooo, I decided it would be a good idea to buy myself a birthday present. The advice from my friendly full-service camera store was to consider only a rectangular style, said circular would drive me crazy. Two of the guys agreed that Cokin would be a good choice. Because my store doesn't stock this item, I figured that was probably unbiased advice.
I didn't get the greatest subject but, after two days of rain, I jumped on the chance to shoot anything; I would have liked a deep blue sky with fluffy white clouds. Oh well... I spot metered the sky and the foreground and saw a bit more than three stops difference in exposure. I took one shot "as is" and then mounted a 3-stop graduated filter; cool results...
I didn't have to touch the sky in my "filtered image", good foreground exposure and not a bit of blown highlights anywhere. I put a full-size image in the Make Art thread.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6838&p=77242#p77242
I know from experimentation that I am capable of hand holding the camera with the filter assembly attached, but it's so putzy fooling around to get the filter positioned for desired results, I can't see using it any way other than on a tripod.
As you can hopefully see, you just slide the filter up and down in the holder while looking thru the viewfinder. I obviously wanted the dark part of the filter over the sky and the clear over the foreground.
Rusty
I didn't get the greatest subject but, after two days of rain, I jumped on the chance to shoot anything; I would have liked a deep blue sky with fluffy white clouds. Oh well... I spot metered the sky and the foreground and saw a bit more than three stops difference in exposure. I took one shot "as is" and then mounted a 3-stop graduated filter; cool results...
I didn't have to touch the sky in my "filtered image", good foreground exposure and not a bit of blown highlights anywhere. I put a full-size image in the Make Art thread.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6838&p=77242#p77242
I know from experimentation that I am capable of hand holding the camera with the filter assembly attached, but it's so putzy fooling around to get the filter positioned for desired results, I can't see using it any way other than on a tripod.
As you can hopefully see, you just slide the filter up and down in the holder while looking thru the viewfinder. I obviously wanted the dark part of the filter over the sky and the clear over the foreground.
Rusty