Quick Review of the GND8 Filter from STARTRC

[js47]

I am a big fan of GND filters and love that this exists, unfortunately it is just not a good filter and consequently I can confidently not recommend it.

2 Major Problems:

1. There is a strong blue color cast over the entire image. This is fixable in post, but the bigger issue is that the color cast is much stronger in the dark part of the filter than it is in the clear part of the filter. So you need to create a gradient mask to correct the white balance...a moderate pain to say the least. Given that the entire point of a GND for me is to simplify my post processing workflow, this filter just does not work for me.
2. The glass is low quality and there are issues with sharpness. These issues are not so apparent with the wide angle lens, but the shots l've taken with the telephoto lens are so soft as to be completely useless. The tele camera is not great to begin with but this filter completely ruins it. I guess I could just knock out the glass on the tele side of the filter (they are separate pieces), don't really love that idea though.

On top of that, there are some obvious limitations to using a GND on a small drone in the first place:

1. It means you can't use a different filter (ND or CPL or ND+CPL).
2. It makes stitching panoramas much more difficult (not impossible - you just need to correct each image before stitching).
3. [Many people will say that fixed GNDs like this are only useful if you are going to place the horizon at precisely 2/3 of the way up the frame, but the transition line is sufficiently soft on this filter that it doesn't matter so much in this case. Note that I really do not shoot video so everything I say on this forum is through the lens of photography only.]

The one I have is "STARTRC" brand but this is sold under many different names around the world. If there was a good quality version of this filter out there I would buy it instantly, but for now I will stick to HDR merging!