Using the Hi-Tech ND 10, ND 8 Pro Stop filter

Posted by bpham on Oct 21, 2011 in Blog | 5 comments

As of now, most photographers have heard of these 10-stop ND filter.  I was curious myself about this type of filter.  There are few different brands available at this time that are most popular, the B+W ND3.0, the Lee Big-stopper and the Hitech ND 10 Pro-stop.  I’m writing only on this Hitech version since I only have experience with this one. I also got the ND-8 version to use.  The image that you see here in this blog is basically a panorama created using the ND-10 at sunrise, at Gallatin Range, a lesser known area that was fantastically beautiful, and, I found it by chance when driving up North to see some other attractions inside Yellowstone NP.  One thing about this ND-10 is that it would impart a very dark blueish tint to your images and on the first look, per-processing, and you’d be discouraged.  Also depending on how much light you have, you’d need to expose for a long period of time.  However, if the condition and the mood is right, the picture can be very distinctive and beautiful and usually is hard to duplicate without this filter.  So my take is, YES, it is worth it to have this filter in my bag.  Another thing that is also great with this filter is that your black and white photos might be beautiful too, especially, when you take some photos of scenes in the middle of the day with very hash sun against some dark foreground like waterfalls, rivers, etc…, and it would not be easy without it.

To summarize how to use this filter:

• Use RAW.  You’ll need lots of tolerance in your dark areas because of the need to open them up in some situations.
• Of course use your tripod and shutter release cable or similar devices.
• I have a Lee filter holder, so when you order the ND10 from Hitech, make sure that you tell them that you want the version for the Lee holder, otherwise, they’ll might give you the one for their own brand of holder, which will not fit in the Lee holder. BTW, the Lee holders are started to come in (as of this writing Oct-20-2011) and I got it from 2filters.com, who I recommend highly to buy filters there since their service is first class and the gentleman that I talked to there truly concerns about what he sells to you.  I bought all of my filters there because of this reason.
• When you use this, it is so dark therefore you can’t compose nor focus, so you need to compose, manually focus first without it, then slide it on.  Hi-tech provides a little cheat sheet that is kind of suggesting the exposures when using their ND-10, and I found it useful in setting your exposure the first time, however, it seems consistently lower than what I found that I like my pictures to look, so I usually added another 15% over what they have (mileage varies).
• Remember to cover up your view finder before hitting the shutter release button.  I’ve heard of light leaking into your images if you don’t do so.  I’ve not verified it but don’t want to take a chance.
• When you do post processing in Photoshop, it is quite easy to fix the color-cast by using the curves tool, pick an area where you think is neutral, then use the middle gray point sampler to sample that area.  Note, that not all pictures could be corrected this way and some will not look natural regardless of how or what you do, in that case, convert them to B&W.
  

  Yellowstone Lake Landing

Compare the the ND-8 filter, I think I used this one more frequently, because you CAN actually see thru it and therefore you can focus and meter your exposure without having to take the filter off, like in the ND-10 situation.  However, you should know that with the ND-10, when the condition is right, it might give you  magical results.  The same tips that I give you on the ND-10 can be applied to this.

The pouch that comes with these Pro filters are well built and is a more welcome addition compared to the almost-unusable-plastic sleeves that come with the regular version.

The bottom line is this,  I would recommend that if you have a chance, get these filters from one of these guys (either Hi-tech, Lee, or B+W), it is good to have them in your camera bags, because you don’t know when you need to use them and when you use them, the results could be awesome.

Hope that this help.  Let me know if you have questions, I will be glad to answer them.