Using 4x4/5.65 filters with small SLR lenses

hoarp001

hoarp001

Veteran
I just got a Redrock mattebox and was playing around with a grad filter and it suddenly struck me that these filters are designed for cine lenses with much larger front elements than the small SLR lenses that wea re using.

Thats fine for a grad or a CC filter or something thats a flat colour all the way along but with a grad, a smaller lens uses a smaller part of the gradient, so the gradient has far less effect than it would with a much larger front element.

I bodged up a diagram in photoshop...

http://www.peter-hoare.co.uk/SLRcine.jpg

It seems like when using a grad with a small lens, the grad needs to happen over a two inch section rather than the whole filter...

Maybe some plastic inserts with a female thread to screw on screw-on filters would be a nice addition...
 
A mini bellows between the objective lens and the filter stage so you could tune the distance between them would be ideal.
 
There are soft grads and hard grads. I own both . The soft grads tend to work best with wider lenses and vice versa. The closer they are to the lens and the smaller the diameter of the lens - the softer the grad will appear. Likewise wider f stops will make the affect softer.

Its good to have both and playing with how far away the filter will give you more flexibility.

Lenny Levy
 
I've been using 3x3 just because I got a huge set of them with some 4x4 and I like them more than the 4x4 when using grads for this reason. Vocas sells a 3x3 holder for their 4x4 matteboxes that works great. Plus 3x3 are somuch cheaper ($25 or less on ebay) and my largest lens is 67mm which fits inside the edges just fine.
 
The circumference of the front element has very little to do with that, its about Field of view. Maybe try a hard edge grad next time?
 
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