Vari ND vs. normals

[vsa]

To get longer shutter speed in bright sunlight the ND filters are required. And if I'm wrong please do correct me. So what are your thoughts on the NDs?

Would you get Vari ND or a few normal ones and stack them when needed?

Singh-Ray Vari ND (2-8 stops) slim version costs $390.
LCW Fader ND (2-8 and 9-12) are around $125 and $225.
....at least as far as I've found them in the web.

Another issue would be ultra wide angles (crop frame bodies). Let's say Canon 10-22 for example. How much vignette would stacking introduce? Or the variable filters as they're a bit thicker than normal ones?

Could you justify the high price of those or would it be just better get something like ND400 for those stupid long exposures? (although ND400 from Hoya would cost about the same as those Fader ND2 to ND400 ones >.>)

And one last thing would be that the variable filter would be more handy when in some distant future I'll get a body with video capabilities. But that probably won't happen for a year or two.

I would love to hear your thoughts on all of this.

[philaw123]

This filter purportedly comes from the same manufacturer of the LCW Fader. While I have not done extensive testing with it, my research on whether to get one or not has led me to the conclusion that this is not a perfect solution but it suits my needs.

While great value when shooting HDDSLR video, still shooting will require compromise in IQ and some color shifting. As far as vignetting issues are concerned, I have an 86mm which I used with 2 step up rings (77-82 and 82-86) mounted on my Tokina 11-16 and experienced some vignetting at 11mm but started disappearing by 12mm. I think that one step up ring (77-86) might be better and solve this problem.

There have been claims of weird cross effects when using this type of filter set to a really dark setting but I have not experienced it even beyond maximum and at 11mm. The only time I experienced it was when I tried this in conjunction with a CPL and using those extreme settings on a Tamron 18-250 set at 18mm. At those settings though, there was already extremely heavy vignetting so I would classify those shots as purely experimental. I have since tried it with the Toki too.

Vignetting when using this setup with the Toki ends at 14mm with the lens wide open. BTW the Fader was set to a little past the "x" of Max when it displayed this effect. When it was set to the last dot/arrow, this effect did not manifest itself. The lighter settings behaved similarly.

I have some Tian Ya ND filters but have not done any comparison tests with them yet. I also have no access to the Singh Ray Vari ND (nor its variants), since they cost so much, so no comparos there either.

There was a lot of image degradation when using the Fader with my CPL but I think that the problem lies with the quality of my CPL. On its own, the Fader performs respectably and I am quite satisfied with what it allows me to experiment with. Its range spans from ND2 to ND400. I'm not quite sure how many stops that is but I would think stacking several ND filters to reach ND400 would introduce a certain amount of image degradation too. I'm not quite sure how much degradation a single ND400 filter would though.

FWIW I tried the CPL in combination with the Fader because SinghRay has some models that offer this. If I want the Fader to come closer to SR, I think I need to spend more than 10 bucks on a CPL