Hitech or lee: Is there much difference ?

[David]

Gday people-

I have balked at the prices of Lee GNDs and the pain in the ....finding somewhere that does not ask outragous delivery prices for them too from OS.

I have decided to go with Hitech HARD GNDs, a set actually (0.3/0.6/0.9) for 171.00 delivered from the US.

I am now wondering if I made a mistake here. Does anyone have experience with HITECH and LEE and can tell me the difference in quality between them.

I know LEE are top of the range etc but I am thinking at my Amateur level I do not need to go all out with the $$$, especially these days with CS5 etc offering virtual GND New Adjustment Layers that do amazing things.

Thoughts, suggestions welcome, actually needed here. I was working from a Cokin -Hoya GND system prior to all this.

Cheers.

[peterb666]

I expect HiTech filters are cheaper from the UK - that's where they are made.

Formatt Filters website is www.formatt.co.uk but the site appears to be down just at the moment.

Their filters are the same price at http://www.teamworkphoto.com

They are quite good. I have a 3-stop hard grad, 3-stop reverse hard grad, 4-stop ND and 8-stop ND.

Do note that they are not colour cast free - when you stack or have the equivalent of around 6-stops you sometimes get magenta colour casts. Not a huge problem with solid ND filters as the whole image is affected evenly, but with the GND's it can be fun to remove. I find them adequate for my needs and certainly cannot justify the cost of Lee or Singh-Ray filters (and Lee don't make 85mm filters which I use anyway).

I find Cokin perfectly fine but unfortunately they don't do hard grads (nor NDs more than 3-stop).

[David]

I expect HiTech filters are cheaper from the UK - that's where they are made.

Formatt Filters website is www.formatt.co.uk but the site appears to be down just at the moment.

Their filters are the same price at http://www.teamworkphoto.com

They are quite good. I have a 3-stop hard grad, 3-stop reverse hard grad, 4-stop ND and 8-stop ND.

Do note that they are not colour cast free - when you stack or have the equivalent of around 6-stops you sometimes get magenta colour casts. Not a huge problem with solid ND filters as the whole image is affected evenly, but with the GND's it can be fun to remove. I find them adequate for my needs and certainly cannot justify the cost of Lee or Singh-Ray filters (and Lee don't make 85mm filters which I use anyway).

I find Cokin perfectly fine but unfortunately they don't do hard grads (nor NDs more than 3-stop).

Thanks for the very helpful links and comments. I tend to avoid stacking GNDs because I do not want the colour casts etc to mess around with in Photoshop ..guess you could go to the hue/saturation adjustment layer and slide that magenta saturation back but.

I have a good set of B + W NDs now (1,2,3,6,10 stops) and their CPL which are very good quality and do a great job. I am collecting GNDs now.. Glad to hear someone is happy with the Hitech GNDs -

I noted they make reverse GNDs too which is great: I will get one if the GNDs turn out to be as good as I am hoping. Cheers.