Fader ND mk.II vs Vari ND Pt.2

shaocaholica

shaocaholica

Well-known member
Well I got a new Fader ND from LCW after I sent them photos from my last thread and they said that those results didn't look up to par with what they expect from their mk.II product which is supposed to address resolution issues at tele focal lengths. I tested both Faders (original + replacement) against a Vari ND I borrowed from Stephen Mick. Thanks Steve!

Here are the results:

FaderII_vs_Vari.jpg



All I can say is...urrrrrrrrrrrrgh... The new(er) replacement that was supposed to fix everything turns out to be worse than the -soft- sample I already had.
 
thanks,send them link to this thread to let them know that we know about softness of Fader ND and i personally wont buy that thing until it gets fixed.Work harder Lightcraft Workshop this is not quality for the money.Take it to the lab and test it ,you only have to do it once ,work harder on it to figure it out and you have good product which is essential for us for shooting during sunlights ,variND looks acceptable.
 
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Fader ND from LCW is a scam.

Your best bet is to buy a couple of Tiffen ND IR filters in various strengths. It will cost a little more but you won't have to deal with the ugly green colour cast, weird-looking bokeh, sharpness loss and poor craftsmanship of the Fader NDs.
 
Well, LCW has stepped up and offered a full refund in light of my results. They say they will try to reproduce my results on their end and figure out why its so bad.
 
A couple of things I want to know:

1) Is the insane chromatic abberation normal for that Tokina lens? (yikes!)

2) Are you sure the focus wasn't being accidentally changed? did you try and refocus after each nd change?
 
One thing that I have found with the FaderND is that it is TOTALLY unusable on anything over 50mm. Below that it works as advertised.
 
Nathan.Buxton said:
A couple of things I want to know:

1) Is the insane chromatic abberation normal for that Tokina lens? (yikes!)

2) Are you sure the focus wasn't being accidentally changed? did you try and refocus after each nd change?
Click to expand...

The CA probably looks more pronounced in a 100% crop from a 18MP APS-C sensor. Also, its an older lens.

I did refocus with 10x live view after every filter change. Live view focussing on the Faders was really hard since at 10x, it never gets sharp.
 
Consistent with what I've seen side-by-side with a friend's mk II Fader and my Singh-Ray. Even the Singh-Ray softens a bit, even set to minimum, and even at the widest focal lengths, but it's nothing I've noticed as deleterious. Indispensable for run n gun exteriors.

If you're looking to avoid vignetting when wide with the Singh-Ray you'll want the thin ring mount 77mm. You can go wider without vignetting than with the 82mm standard ring mount. (You lose 2.5mm between the 77mm and the 82mm, but you lose more using a step-up ring and the added profile height of the standard ring mount, even though you get back 2.5mm by being at 82mm.) The only bummer is there are no front threads on the thin ring mount.
 
... said:
Fader ND from LCW is a scam.

Your best bet is to buy a couple of Tiffen ND IR filters in various strengths. It will cost a little more but you won't have to deal with the ugly green colour cast, weird-looking bokeh, sharpness loss and poor craftsmanship of the Fader NDs.
Click to expand...

+1 but I would recommend B+W NDs or DIY CPL+LPL over Tiffen.
 
I think that even with the thin version you may only get about half of the zoom range of the tokina. You may vignette at 13 or even 14. Try Gary at Singh-Ray. He seems to know a lot about it.

You may want to poke around.
 
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