Graduated Neutral Density Filter and its advantages in Landscape photography
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Neelima

Neelima Vallangi is a travel photographer and blogger. (The Wandering Soul's Wander Tales..). She has trekked extensively across the mountain ranges in India, including the Himalayas. At a young age her photos have appeared in the Getty Collection. Neelima’s photography blog will feature twice a month on the Indiahikes website.

 

 

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Graduated Neutral Density Filter and its advantages in Landscape photography

Most of us must be familiar with circular polarizing filter and neutral density filter. However there is a third essential filter according to me that must be included in every Landscape Photographer’s kit and that is a Graduated Neutral Density Filter also known as Grad ND. While a neutral density filter serves the purpose of reducing the amount of light reaching the sensor, thus allowing for longer exposures, a Grad ND also serves an almost similar purpose with some differences.

But before we venture deeper into understanding what problems these filters solve, let me ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how the sunset and sunrise photos have such a deep sky and a fantastically lit foreground? Have you ever wondered what is that you are missing when you try to shoot a monsoon sky and all you get is overblown highlights instead of that lovely mist you were seeing? If you ever tried shooting in manual mode, you would’ve faced this problem. In situations where the exposure difference varies too much between the darker and brighter areas in the scene, if you expose for the brighter area the dark shades totally lose detail with black shadows and if you expose for the darker area the lighter areas totally lose detail with overblown highlights. 

Being a landscape photographer I used to use face this problem regularly. And not just that, given my love of monsoons I used to find the clouds and mist so wonderful but the feeling seldom translated to my photographs because of the tricky lighting conditions. Often times I used to find myself spending hours in post processing trying to correct an image as the one shown below to bring out some details in the top portion. That was until I knew the secret of the pro landscape photographers.



The difference can be clearly seen in the two photos that how using a Grad ND has helped me retain the details of the mist and mountains even after exposing the foreground


The secret was a simple yet effective tool called the Grad ND filter. A Grad ND Filter is a clear filter with the top part gray or opaque. The gradation between the dark and the clear part can be either abrupt (called hard-edge) or gradual (called soft-edge). In fact the best example I can give of Grad ND effect is that it is just how the “Graduated Tint” effect in Picasa works.

Since half the filter is dark, it allows much lesser light and the other half is clear, it exposes the darker regions suitably to balance the tonal range within the image. What this means is now your sky retains the wonderful details while the foreground also retains the details.These filters come either as a rectangular filter with the adapter system or as circular screw-in filters. They come in varying stops as well, stops denotes the degree of darkness. Depending on the quality of the filter, there could be problems of reflections on the filter, color casts, scratches etc. But none of these problems are a big hindrance for the hobby photographer, however if you are ready to pay for it, the top quality filters eliminate these problems.

I personally prefer the rectangular filter component system which comes with an adapter which screws onto the lens. This adapter will contain slots to place the rectangular filter. The advantage being, you can move the filter up and down according to the requirement.

If not a graduated nd filter, the other ways of tackling this problem would be to either try an HDR or to take multiple shots and try and painfully merge them into one. I prefer to get most of the work done on field rather than later in post processing.

Check here if you are wondering what an adapter and a Grad ND Filter looks like.

For any questions regarding photography, post your questions to Neelima on the comments box below.

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