What’s the big deal with ND filters?

 
What’s the big deal with Neu­tral Den­sity (ND) fil­ters? Do we REALLY need to use them when shoot­ing motion? We cre­ated a short video tuto­r­ial using Canon’s (super awe­some) EOS C300 to demon­strate what hap­pens when you can’t really con­trol the light (shoot­ing out­doors), you have too much of it (bright day, noon) and you want to use the aper­ture as a cre­ative tool, not only as an expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion tool. Remem­ber that when shoot­ing video we pretty much set and for­get the shutter.

The C300 has three built-in ND fil­ters; ND1 (+2), ND2, (+4) and ND3 (+6). We don’t have that lux­ury when using HDSLR sys­tems, but we can always get a very nice vari­able ND fil­ter that cov­ers up to 8 stops!

Check the video below:

Look­ing for answers to your work­flow ques­tions? Want to make the most of your new gear? Book a vir­tual or on-site con­sult­ing ses­sion today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2013 at 09:00. It is filed under Cinematography, Digital Cinema, Education, HDSLR Cinema, Photography and tagged with analysis, canon, cinematography, film and video, filmmaking techniques, Neutral Density Filters, photography, street photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.