fader nd - wow

A

AndyW69

Member
I bought a couple of these from a Hong Kong ebay store, they were really helpful and supplied several rings to match my lens'. I used one today on the kit lens, it made exposure and DOF so easy. I can't imagine not using it every time now

Andy
 
quoting Martti Ekstrand, "Fader / Vari-NDs are a good fast solution in many situations but they can make the sky shift in colour and lightness when panning / tilting. Ditto for reflections in objects like cars and streets. Gets even more noticeable when handheld and dutching the cam around the optical axis."

Have you noticed these issues?
 
Almost all the shots were static, plants mostly, no issue there. I did do a couple of pans, no obvious problem

Andy
 
Probably a side effect of the polarizing aspect of the Fader - something that's not present in fixed ND filters. I still expect I'll get a lot of use out of mine, it should be arriving sometime this next week hopefully...
 
Anyone else on this side of the pond call those grads. I know a lot of DPs that call those grads. Fader sounds much cooler.
 
Different kind of filters.

Grads or graduated are filters that go from say ND4 in top to clear in bottom. (HELLOOOO Tony Scott!) Fader ND or Vari-ND utilizes two polarizers to achieve a stepless solid ND filter instead of using standard NDs.
 
I bought a linear pola and a circular pola. Tried to use them as a vari-ND and it didn't seem to do anything but give me a color shift.
 
I've read that you have to get them in the right order - but I forget which... might be worth trying to swap them around to see what difference you get. Or of course I may be trying to teach my granny to suck eggs.
 
Mike@AF said:
I bought a linear pola and a circular pola. Tried to use them as a vari-ND and it didn't seem to do anything but give me a color shift.
Click to expand...

The vari-fader-nd-things (just two edge-sealed polarizers) have actually been around since at least the late 1970s (I had one that was at least 30-years old, it was included with my CP-16R/A).

The original intention of this filter was to give shooters the ability to create a fade-out or fade-in. At the time the filter was sold, it was much less expensive to buy the fading filter (once) and get the desired effect in-camera than it was to have an optical house/lab do the work, on the answer print.

On that fiiter I noticed a unfavorable color/density shift that became stronger the more the two segments were aligned or "closed" but since it was designed to be something that was fading in or out rather quickly, I'm certain most people wouldn't notice (or care) if there was a shift.

It would be interesting if someone decided to shoot a Pepsi challenge of clean lens with iris exposure (as the control), traditional NDs, Pola+traditional NDs, and finally a vari-fader-nd-thing. This could be done easily with still photos. It might be very educational.

My guess is that not much has changed from the original implementation of the device except perhaps for the marketing, although I could be wrong. Someone with all the filters should test.
 
Ozpeter said:
I've read that you have to get them in the right order - but I forget which... might be worth trying to swap them around to see what difference you get. Or of course I may be trying to teach my granny to suck eggs.
Click to expand...

I'm not your granny and I don't want to suck eggs.
 
I think Philip Bloom uses fader NDs... it would be interesting to get his views.
 
I've got FaderND. Use it with my HDC-SD1. Indispensable, because consumer Panasonic camcorders have no built-in ND filter. Sony and Canon camcorder do have built-in ND filters, so they almost never need FaderND or a regular ND filters.
 
Mike@AF said:
I bought a linear pola and a circular pola. Tried to use them as a vari-ND and it didn't seem to do anything but give me a color shift.
Click to expand...

You had the polarizers in the wrong order. The circular polarizer goes on the lens first, and the linear on top of that. If you have it backwards you have either a slight "warming" (yellow) or "cooling" (blue) filter depending on how you twist the polarizer. Once on the lens, you only rotate the linear polarizer to vary the ND amount.
 
If you have lenses that are varying filter threads, is it better to buy buy filter sets for your largest and appropriate step-up rings for all the others in your bag?
Just trying to figure out if I buy one of these, how I can use it on all of my lenses... Thanks. Probably a dumb question, but I'm an hvx guy and am buying accessories for my gh1 that is coming on weds...
 
I got a 77mm Fader to go with all my lenses. There are 82mm lenses but I seldom have the use for a filter that large. It works great to adjust the "iris". But if rotating out of bounce you can get some strange effects. Using steprings for the smaller lenses threads.
 
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