GH2 Help me choose a filter and adapter

J

Julie_Freed

Member
Hello :)

Right now I only have three lenses - the kit Panasonic 14-42mm, a cheap 35mm CCTV lens, and a recently purchased Voigtlander 25mm. I do plan to get a higher zoom lens soon.

I don't know anything about filters. Do I really need one? Do any of you shoot without filters? If I need one, can you recommend me a filter and adapter for the GH2? I will probably be using the Voigtlander 25mm most of the time but should I get a bigger filter with separate adapters so that it can be used on different size lenses?

Thanks! :)
 
An important filter if you want to shoot outside would be an ND filter. Variable are the most convenient to use. I tested a lot of them and the brand "Fader HD" $300 was the best overall. I purchased the 77mm filter and used rings to adapt to my 4/3rds lenses as 77mm is the most common for all photo lenses.
 
Julie,

my most used filters are:
1) UV for lens protection - I have broken a couple of inexpensive UV filters over the past couple of years - which saved two expensive lenses. I buy a UV filter for each lens and leave it on 100% of the time. Period.
2) Circular Polarizer to put the blue back in the sky - my GH2 had a tendency to wash out the sky. The CPL fixed this. I usually buy a kit with the UV, CPL and a fluorescent filter that fits my largest lens and then get adapter rings for my other lenses.
3) Variable ND filter - I put this last because it is only a 'nice to have' for me. If I'm outdoors in bright light, I'll use the ND if I really want shallow depth of field while maintaining the 180 degree shutter rule, but most times I don't care. For serious video shooters, this is a much bigger deal.

Hope that was helpful,

Bill
 
brunerww said:
3) Variable ND filter - I put this last because it is only a 'nice to have' for me. If I'm outdoors in bright light, I'll use the ND if I really want shallow depth of field while maintaining the 180 degree shutter rule, but most times I don't care. For serious video shooters, this is a much bigger deal.
Click to expand...

That "180 shutter rule" doesn't really apply to us.

It stems from early motion picture days when 24fps was chosen as the best compromise between economy of film consumption and a frame rate still fast enough for persistence of vision to work (for most people). The shutter in early cameras was a rotating disk with half of it "cut out" to expose the film while the solid half "masked" the film while the next frame wasbeing pulled into place.

Half of the disk was 180 degrees. The 180 degree shutter was not a "rule", it was what you got, and the resulting shutter speed was 1/48th. Then the variable angle shutter disk came along and you could set a 90 degree shutter angle for a shutter speed of 1/96th of a second.

These days our cameras have a rolling scan of the sensor, there's nothing like the cutout on a rotating disk so there's no 180 degree shutter rule. We set our shutters to 1/50th in PAL regions to avoid flickering and banding from artificial lighting driven by 50Hz power line frequency, or in NTSC regions 1/60th for the same reason.

As to Juiie's original question, I use ND filters outside because I don't like to shoot at minimum aperture. Even if I don't want selective focus with a large aperture I still like to shoot at around f11 to f8.
 
brunerww said:
Julie,

my most used filters are:
1) UV for lens protection - I have broken a couple of inexpensive UV filters over the past couple of years - which saved two expensive lenses. I buy a UV filter for each lens and leave it on 100% of the time. Period.
2) Circular Polarizer to put the blue back in the sky - my GH2 had a tendency to wash out the sky. The CPL fixed this. I usually buy a kit with the UV, CPL and a fluorescent filter that fits my largest lens and then get adapter rings for my other lenses.
3) Variable ND filter - I put this last because it is only a 'nice to have' for me. If I'm outdoors in bright light, I'll use the ND if I really want shallow depth of field while maintaining the 180 degree shutter rule, but most times I don't care. For serious video shooters, this is a much bigger deal.

I bought this inexpensive 72mm kit for my largest lens, along with an inexpensive variable ND filter and I was all set.

Filter thread on your Voiglander and your 14-42 are both 52mm. I doubt the CCTV lens is any larger than that. You'll need a 52mm to 72mm step up ring like this one if you want to use 72mm filters with the Voigtlander and the Panasonic.

If the "higher zoom lenses" you're looking at include the Panasonic 14-140, it has a 62mm filter thread, and most of the old 4/3 zooms have 72mm filter threads, so you should be OK with the 72mm set I recommended above.

If, however, you're looking at zoom lenses with larger (e.g., 77mm) filter threads, you may want to do as Bassman suggests and get a 77mm filter set and a 52 to 77mm step up ring.

Hope that was helpful,

Bill
Click to expand...

Thanks for the great info! What about something like this? I think it includes everything no? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA04D09G0413
 
Bruce Foreman said:
That "180 shutter rule" doesn't really apply to us.
Click to expand...

I've noticed that when I shoot with a shutter speed that is more than twice my frame rate it starts to look decidedly more "video like" than "filmlike". The natural-looking motion blur is gone and the moving images begin to have a stuttered appearance. I forgot my variable ND filter yesterday while filming a parade so I had to use a very high shutter speed. It looked horrible. The only saving grace was that with zero motion blur and shooting with the Canis firmware setting I was able to use a lot of the video images as stills.
 
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I agree with everyone's recommendations so far, but I've ended up going back to my regulary (non-variable) set of ND's as I prefer the image quality. Graduated ND's are also great, but in order to use them properly you need a matte box or a Cokin system or something.
I have a related question. I've been curious about using filters for black and white film (a la Ansel Adams). Would something like a Red 25 work on a digital camera?
 
Kdawg said:
Those are 72mm thread size though aren't they? My panasonic lenses are like 52mm, 46mm... make sure they fit
Click to expand...

dawg - pretty sure she saw my previous post:

"Filter thread on your Voiglander and your 14-42 are both 52mm. I doubt the CCTV lens is any larger than that. You'll need a 52mm to 72mm step up ring if you want to use 72mm filters with the Voigtlander and the Panasonic."

Cheers,

Bill
 
brunerww said:
dawg - pretty sure she saw my previous post:

"Filter thread on your Voiglander and your 14-42 are both 52mm. I doubt the CCTV lens is any larger than that. You'll need a 52mm to 72mm step up ring if you want to use 72mm filters with the Voigtlander and the Panasonic."

Cheers,

Bill
Click to expand...

Gonna have to start getting my screen in braille, totally missed that post.

:cool:
 
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