I went back and forth between the z-pro and lee foundation kit. Reading lots of reviews that said it would not vignette on a Canon 17mm lens on a FF body, I decided to go this route. Well, I used it (configured as it came) on a 24-70/2.8 and a FF camera body and I could not go less than 28mm without vignette. What gives? I was extremely disappointed to have that limitation. So, is there something I need to make this work on a wide angle lens?
Does the Lee filter system have the same problem? If I had a 17-40 or 16-35, the vignette would defeat the purpose of those extreme wide angles. Need your advice.
Kevin
Strange. I have a z-pro configured with 3 slots in front and 1 slot if I turn it around, and have no problem on my zeiss 21mm @ f5.6, 17-40 mm @ f5.6 and 24-70mm @ f4 with both my D800 and 5DII. Even wide open, the vignette is barely there.
The only way I would foresee that happening is if the Cokin holder is extended out from the lens some distance. You aren't using a UV or other filter on the lens are you? If so, if you take it off you should have no problem.
Regarding Lee's holder, no vignetting at 16mm on FF using the wide angle adaptor ring. Here I stacked the Big Stopper, 4x4 polarizer and a .6 GND soft with no problems.
Dave, you may have just found my problem. Yes, I had a circular polarizer mounted on the lens then the cokin z-pro. I needed the polarizer effect but was hoping to avoid spendng 300$ on a filter that fits the cokin z-pro. I'll try without it to see if it vignettes.
I started with the Cokin "sprocket" polarizer, but moved away from it. It is a good enough polarizer, but isn't coated, so flare was a frequent issue. In some cases I could even read the engraving on the front on the lens in the reflection from the back of the polarizer!
I now use a B+W MRC threaded polarizer on the front of the lens and mount the Cokin on that, just as you describe. HOWEVER, I got an 82 mm polarizer (for a lens with a 77 mm thread diameter), and also got the 82 mm ring. This combination does not vignette on a Canon crop down to 11 mm; at 10 mm the filter slots impinge on the corners. This is avoidable by removing one of the slots, but I usually just clone into the corners. I imagine you would be good to 17 mm on a full frame, but would probably see some vignetting at 16 mm.
But now that B+W has a slim version that is threaded on the front (they didn't when I got mine), you might even be able to avoid that problem.
One approach is to move the filter holder closer to the front of the lens. You accomplish this by moving the 77mm lend adapter to the fron of the holder, in the very first slot. This makes the Cokin Z pro nearly identical to the Lee Wide Angle adapter in function, like this:
If you are still getting vignetting of the filter slots, remove the 3rd one. In the tutorial above I also removed the 3rd slot, but it was merely for making the holder thinner while packed in the bag, it had nothing to do with vignetting.
Solution 2: use the Lee square CP in your Z pro holder and not the screw on circurlar one between the lens and holder. This was mentioned above. The only disadvantage to this 4X4 Lee CP is that you have only 2 orientations possible when in combination with a GND. However, it works quite well, even with that limitation.
discussed in some detail here http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=883069&highlight=Lee+square+cp
