Just talked to Heliopan about the variable ND filters - good news.

[arroway]

It´s about adding a sunshade, not more glass.

Is there a particular sunshade you use or recommend for use with the Heliopan?

[Postmaster]

Personally I prefer those rubber sunshades, that fold back in three steps, cause it´s very versatile - you just need one and leave it attached to the ND all the time.
Because it folds back, you can adopt it to wider lenses to prevent vignetting in a second.

They are plenty on ebay in any diameter and size for a few bucks. I don´t recommend no special brand, since they come all from the same Chinese factory anyway.

Frank

[Postmaster]

At least for outdoors daylight shooting I like a UV filter too. Sky 1A or similar. Helps DR by preventing premature clipping in the blue channel and also improves color contrast. Yes you degrade a bit when you add more layers of glass, but sometimes the tradeoff is worth it.

+1 on the sun shade.

Heliopan makes also a nice UV/Infrared combined cutof filter

...just saying.

[Searcher]

Just got this back from a Heliopan dealer after questioning if they'd heard of the new filters with front threads:

No, just a false rumor.No Variable ND filters with front threads.
They are not to be used in conjunction with other filters.

They are looking into slip over caps but that is it.

[Postmaster]

Dealer - Schmealer,

I got this information straight from the horses mouth,
after talking about half an hour with the product manager here in Germany.

Frank

[jambredz]

what's the big deal having filter threads on the front? Cant you put the heliopan on last? Especially since you'll be rotating it to change exposure.

[Postmaster]

If you can put a sunshade in front of the filter, you can rotate it by grabbing the sunshade, instead of reaching deep into the shade.

Frank

[jambredz]

oh...kool. thought ya'll meant for adding other filters.

[Searcher]

Dealer - Schmealer,

I was hoping you'd say that... A front shade would be so much better than having to reach in like you said.

[kmoreau893]

Any news on the front threaded heliopans? Or any more info or workarounds on getting a shade onto the non-threaded versions?