Gradient ND filters?

[afarkas]

Anyone ever heard about gradient ND filters for mavic 2 pro?
I really would like to have that

 

[msinger]

You can find some graduated filters here.

 

[zocalo]

I have the Polar Pro ones. They're useful for sunrise/sunset shots, but definitely not something that you are going to use very often outside the peak of the Golden Hour.

They rotate as well, so if you have something like a mountain range off to one side of the frame you can take rough guess at the required angle, but that *really* limits the angles you can shoot at before you have to land and adjust.

 

[Point Zero]

I have the Polar Pro ones. They're useful for sunrise/sunset shots, but definitely not something that you are going to use very often outside the peak of the Golden Hour.

They rotate as well, so if you have something like a mountain range off to one side of the frame you can take rough guess at the required angle, but that *really* limits the angles you can shoot at before you have to land and adjust.

I have to respectfully disagree with the "not going to use very often" part. I use the ND filters for long exposure and for very strong direct sunlight. You can use them at many times and what you say about the P filters and the lens angle is true but go ahead and shoot anyway and the footage still looks great after post processing. imho

 

[zocalo]

I have to respectfully disagree with the "not going to use very often" part. I use the ND filters for long exposure and for very strong direct sunlight. You can use them at many times and what you say about the P filters and the lens angle is true but go ahead and shoot anyway and the footage still looks great after post processing. imho

OP was talking about *Gradient* NDs, not plain NDs (which I also use a lot for long exposure and video). They're an entirely different kettle of fish to NDs or Ps.

GNDs are more limiting as they're only really useful when you have more DR between sky and ground than the drone than the camera can handle (e.g. sunrise/sunset, or shooting directly into the sun) *and* it's a better choice than a CP or regular ND. You've also got to consider the transition point; it's dead centre in the frame, so that really means you have to put your horizon close to centre frame as well, which isn't the best compositionally. You can crop to fix that, but that might not be ideal either.

As always it does depend on what you shoot though. If you only really shoot sunrise/set stills, then you'll get a probably get lot more mileage out of them percentage-of-flights wise than if you're more of a generalist.

 

[afarkas]

I shoot mostly in sunrise and sunset, i love the low mists... So gradient is a must have for me.

Pity they all have the midpoint in the midle of the frame. Ideal would be at 1/3 or 1/4 from the top...

Seems like im gona order a very cheap UV, where ill take off the glass and mount some kind of slider on it to fit in selfmade gradients from my old cokins i used to use on my canons [emoji16][emoji16][emoji16]

 

[zocalo]

Pity they all have the midpoint in the midle of the frame. Ideal would be at 1/3 or 1/4 from the top...

I'd also quite like a medium grad equivalent where you have an ND at the very top, clear at the bottom, then a sharper transition at around the 1/3 - 1/4 point. Make it 3-stop and it would make a much more useful GND for landscape use when you might not want to crop to a widescreen format for composition purposes.

Still, with the PolarPro ones (I'd assume Skyreat's as well, but I've not checked) the grad runs smoothly from top to bottom, so it's not like a hard grad where you have a very well defined transition point that has to be aligned with the horizon. There's quite a bit of flexibility in that design with regard to the up/down camera angle, and I can see why they went with this approach. I generally aim to just get everything within the DR range of the sensor in raw mode, then tune the levels with Photoshop's GND filters in post.

 

[afarkas]

Well, sunrise with low mist will never fit into DR of sensors made nowadays

I'd also quite like a medium grad equivalent where you have an ND at the very top, clear at the bottom, then a sharper transition at around the 1/3 - 1/4 point. Make it 3-stop and it would make a much more useful GND for landscape use when you might not want to crop to a widescreen format for composition purposes.

Still, with the PolarPro ones (I'd assume Skyreat's as well, but I've not checked) the grad runs smoothly from top to bottom, so it's not like a hard grad where you have a very well defined transition point that has to be aligned with the horizon. There's quite a bit of flexibility in that design with regard to the up/down camera angle, and I can see why they went with this approach. I generally aim to just get everything within the DR range of the sensor in raw mode, then tune the levels with Photoshop's GND filters in post.