What type of 4 x 4 filters? Where to buy?
- Thread starter Kholi
- Start date
You may want to start with some filter kits. There's a canadien company selling cheap 3 piece kits from Schneider called Century Optronics. Way cheaper than b n' h because there is a sale right now. $357 canadien fro 3 filters that cost close to 200 each. The starter kit is pretty good because it includes a circular pol, and nd .9 and a black frost 1/2. The polarizer you could use for sure, the black frost shows you what how these contrast and haloing filters work, and the nd .9 gives you a different nd than the hvx, plus I get the feeling the image looks better with a glass nd that the internal nd. The lighting filter kit is worth a look too, and can teach you about using lowcon and digicon glass filters in front of your hvx plus it also has a polarizer.
getken
Well-known member
I use 4X4's all the time. I've also used them with the Brevis and I highly recommend using ND's with the 35mm adapters rather than the internal ND's. A polarizer is a must. You can shift reflections in glass and off shiny objects. Also it cuts down on reflected color, like if you have someone on the grass in sunshine and the reflected green off the grass is causing green skin tone. I have three full ND (3, 6 and 9) as well as 3 grad ND (3, 6 and 9) in my kit. I find I use the 3 and 6 fairly often. Not so much on the 9. I use the grads a lot. I also use an 81B warming filter sometimes. It's a good filter to have in the kit. I don't go for the softening filters (pro mist, soft FX etc.) so much as most of that can be had in post and editors seem to prefer it clean. If I'm using 2/3inch lenses I'll often use some type of net behind the lens. There are a ton of great filters out there but they can be expensive. I recently purchased a one-stop polarizer (Schneider) that only cuts one stop of light (normal pola loses 2 stops) for a studio gig and it worked out great to rid skin tones of reflected color.
For an amateur like myself I find the softening filters are pretty cool. They all seem to have a similar characteristic of lowering the contrast. Too my eyes it does look more filmic, which is what the hvx is allready doing. You just get more of it. I'm not good at C.C. 'ing yet, or adding effects in post. That's another can of worms for me to learn, but in the meantime I do appreciate the look these well crafted glass filters impart on my footage.