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Archive 2013 · Formatt filter kit - Usefulness?

  
 
kokopelli99
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Formatt filter kit - Usefulness?


For my Nex-6, I'm thinking of buying the Formatt 40.5mm 5-Filter Starter Kit and I'm looking for advice on whether the following filters in the kit are very useful:

Neutral Density 0.6 Filter
Grad Neutral Density 0.6 (Soft Edge)
Skin Tone Enhancer Filter
Full Frame Low Contrast 1 Filter

It also comes with a Circular Polarizer Filter which I know I will use alot.



Mar 30, 2013 at 09:48 PM
mpmendenhall
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Formatt filter kit - Usefulness?


"Very useful" would probably be an extreme stretch for this filter selection.

ND0.6: drops image exposure by 2 stops. Videographers often need NDs because they are quite limited in what shutter speeds they can use, but for general photographic use a 2-stop ND is too little to be interesting in most cases.

Grad ND: circular grad NDs, which don't let you position the ND transition anywhere but dead-center in the frame, are much less useful than a square set where you can selectively block part of the frame. The Nex-6 has pretty good dynamic range already; you'll usually be better served by learning to expose correctly and process in post.

Skin tone: unlikely that you can't also get the results you want by tweaking color in post

Low contrast: do you really want washed-out, lower-contrast, "glowy" images? You can do a lot of this in post, though a real filter can help with accurate glow portrayal around bright specular highlights --- but only helpful if you want this effect.

The CPol is the only really useful one of these that can't be reasonably well or perfectly mimicked in post processing.



Mar 31, 2013 at 03:56 PM
EB-1
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Formatt filter kit - Usefulness?


Buy a quality polarizer and forget the other stuff in the cheapo kit.

EBH



Mar 31, 2013 at 08:51 PM





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