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Hey all,

So my current goal is to shoot a fountain during the day and have an exposure that goes long enough for the water to give that lovely soft blur.

I just recieved an ND8 and was surpised to find that it was only 1-2 stops darker than my circular polariser.

Do you think combining the ND8 and the polariser would cause me to loose clarity in my picture?

I don't have time to test it because I'm at work. If there's anyone who's done this please let me know.

Also what is the darkest ND grad? Its so hard to find them at the moment I rang around all afternoon yesterday and the only place that had them was a place called vanbar in sydney.

Cheers,

James

I remember wendellt said he had a 64000ND (maybe not grad though)

Not sure where to buy these though

Is the ND8 you bought of a grad or plain ND?

Combining CPL and ND is possilbe to cut down effects, but may result in uneven exposure from the CPL and possible vignetting from your lens. They are not very thin filters to start with.

You might want to consider stacking another plain ND on top for extra stops.

If you want to make a *really* dense filter, used crossed polarisers. That will be a very large number of stops, depending on the quality of the polarisers.
Photographic quality polarisers do degrade image quality, but it is not noticeable for most subjects.
About 15 years ago I took some images of the night sky using a good Hoya polariser on hypersensitised TP2415 film and every star had a short thin line running through it- artifacts caused by the polariser.

Gordon

Gordon wrote:If you want to make a *really* dense filter, used crossed polarisers. That will be a very large number of stops, depending on the quality of the polarisers.
Gordon

...and if that doesn't work use a welder's helmet

phillipb wrote:...and if that doesn't work use a welder's helmet

hehe you could... they are dense enough, but unfortunately not of optical quality!

You can use mylar solar filter material though, its fairly inexpensive and dense enough for photos of the sun... but will probably give you a strange blue cast

Gordon

My R72 (?) IR filter allows approximately a billion stops less light through Ai carumba.