Photography News 12

Kit reviews

Mini tests Our regular look at some of the latest photographic kit to land on dealers’ shelves

Words by Will Cheung

Hoya PRONDfilters £70-185

SPECS

PRICES 77mm £165 guide price, street price around £79 CONTACT www.intro2020.co.uk SIZES 49-82mm STRENGTHS ND 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x, 64x, 100x, 200x, 500x, 1000x WEIGHT 33g (77mm fit)

Extreme long exposure filters are often referred to as extreme neutral density (ND) filters, but they’re generally not neutral. To be fair, most (but not all) makers of extreme NDs make it perfectly clear that a correction is needed. The Lee Filters Big Stopper is cool and needs a Kelvin white-balance setting of 10,000K, while the B+W 110 is warm and 4000K is a good setting. Shoot Raw, of course, and corrections can be made in software. For sheer convenience, having an extreme ND that is neutral is handy and saves time. The camera, for example, can be left on AWB as you switch from normal photography to shooting long exposures. The Hoya PRO ND range claims to be neutral, and features nine strengths of filters from 4x to 1000x. We tested the three strongest strengths on offer: the ND200 absorbs 7.6EV, the ND500 9EV and the ND1000 reduces light by 10EV. All strengths are available in screw-in sizes from 49mm to 82mm. The neutrality in PRO ND filters is thanks to Hoya’s ACCU-ND technology and the coating used also means that there’s no colour shift between filter strengths.

I tested the three filters using a tripod-mounted Nikon D800 first set to AWB and then at individual Kelvin settings. See below for more details. Light absorption was measured using a Gossen Digipro F light meter. The three filters tried here were as quoted by Hoya. The Raw files were processed in Lightroom 5 with the white-balance slider set to As Shot. The results, as you can see, are impressive and neutral as claimed by Hoya. They are also consistent from strength to strength. I thought if anything there might have been a colour shift issue with the strongest filter but it worked fine and proved to be neutral.

NO FILTER, AWB, 1/320SEC AT F/8

PROND 200, AWB

PROND 200, 5560K

The verdict Hoyahas longbeenknownasafiltermanufacturer of high integrity and it certainly shows here. It claims its ND range is neutral and indeed that’s what we found: neutral and optically excellent too, with minimal flare when shooting towards the light. The filters are also easy to clean using a LensPen Filter or a microfibre cloth; finger grease and other nasties came off without leaving any residue or marks. Price-wise the Hoya PRO ND competes strongly with other screw-fit brands and so can be highly recommended. We found one UK dealer selling the 77mm 1000x filter at £79; its guide price is £165, so that seems an exceptionally good deal.

PROND 500, AWB

PROND 500, 5560K

PROND 1000, 5560K

PROND 1000, AWB

ABOVE A series of images taken with Hoya PRO ND filters on a tripod-mounted Nikon D800 starting with an unfiltered AWB shot as a control. Then the filter was added and AWB used again, followed by a sequence of manual Kelvin images from 4000K through to 10,000K using the camera’s presets. We’ve only shown the 5560K result here. The base unfiltered exposure was 1/320sec at f/8 and ISO 100, and the filter factor was then applied to give

the exposure for each ND filter. Processing settings in Lightroom 5 were the same for each image. There are minor variations in the results, which are probably due to changing cloud cover, although all shots were taken when the sun was shining over a seven-minute spell. From these results, you can see that each Hoya PRO ND filter can confidently be used with AWB knowing that a neutral outcome will be the result.

PROS

Neutral results with AWB, consistent colour rendering across the range

CONS

Nothing of note, shop around for the best price

Photography News | Issue 12