The Hard Choice

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The Hard Choice

Dibs McCallum explains his preference for shooting with Hard Grad Filters

Most people will have a good understanding of what a graduated filter (grad) is, but I have put together this article to explain it in a little more detail.

I will also talk about my favourite type of grad, how to use it, and explore its benefits. Particularly, I will look at why I prefer the hard grad over the soft. This is a topic I often cover on the workshops I run.

A soft-edge graduated filter.

The filter effect transitions over a large area of the filter.

A hard-edge graduated filter.

The effect fades in over a much shorter length of the glass.

and Reverse. We will take the reverse out of the equation

The benefits of a hard grad

straight away as that is something a bit more specialist,

Now imagine the same shot looking straight out to sea, but

typically used at sunset or rise, just as the sun is sitting on the

this time you are using a hard grad, the transition from no

horizon.

grad to grad is only 1.5 cm on the 100x150mm filter as shown

There are three main types of grads to consider: Soft, Hard

Why not the soft grad, though?

The reason why I don’t favour the soft grad is straightforward.

I own a fair few, ranging from 1 to 4 stops and also have plenty of them in my training kits for workshop attendees to borrow if needed - I also use them when the time is right.

I live in Norfolk, an area known for its big skies. You can see for miles on a clear day, but pop up to one of the church spires or the Happisburgh Lighthouse, and you could see for over 20 miles on a good day.

My main subject is landscapes. With no trees or buildings on the horizon to block the views, my horizons are relatively clean, and nothing protrudes in from the sides of the image like rock pinnacles, large cliffs or mountains.

This means that the point where the sea meets the sky is very noticeable. There is a distinct contrast in that one is lighter and the other darker; hence we are using a grad filter to try to balance the two out.

If you placed a soft grad in the holder, with a gradual transition from no ND effect to the full ND effect, then the horizon line above or below where the image is darker will actually end up being overexposed. A bright-line where they meet. This is due to the soft grad effect transitioning over a 4-5cm area on a 100x150mm filter, as shown in the image above on the left.

in the image on the right.

That black line you see on the filter will drop right on the horizon; it is where the dark and light part of your image is going to be noticeably different and where you need to have the filter doing its job.

As you slide it into the holder, if you use live view or even look through the viewfinder, you will be able see the filter doing its job as you push it down. As soon as the filter hits that horizon, you want to stop there.

As you can see from the images below the difference between the Hard Grad and Soft Grad is noticeable.

The top half of the image appears to be darker with the Hard Grad, Typically, this means, more detail is retained in the sky.

Using a hard grad rather than soft gives you a more defined line where the effect starts, but mostly you see all the extra detail the soft filter would have missed in this high contrast environment.

No filters

3 Stop Soft Grad Filter and Polariser

2 Stop Hard Grad Filter

These images of Brograve wind pump give an example of

In the third image, I swapped to a 2-stop hard grad, and you

what an image would look like at sunset if you used either no

can see the effect is much the same as the last shot, but the

filters, a soft grad or a hard grad with a polariser.

overexposed area is now smaller and the sky has started

Looking at the first image with no filter, you will notice straight away that to expose the foreground at an acceptable level, the sky is burnt out (overexposed). There is no way to recover that in post-production apart from a sky replacement, which

to retain more detail. The thing to note is that the previous image was shot using a 3-stop, whereas this used a 2-stop filter - meaning the amount of light stopped is a whole stop of difference.

is something I won’t do. Once the details have clipped in

The final image, and the one I was most happy with, used

camera, they are gone forever.

a 3-stop hard grad. When you look at the sky, you can see

In the second image, I have added the 3-stop soft grad. I also adjusted the shutter speed slightly to allow for the polarising filter. In this image you can see the difference in the sky to the left of the windpump.

There were still a lot of blown-out areas in the top of the sky and to the right of the wind pump, and this was as much detail as I could recover with post-production editing.

how well balanced the light levels received by the sensor of the camera are. This is what the filter is designed for - maximising the detail in a scene and allowing you get it correct in-camera - a massive part of image-making for me.

The exposure from the green foliage on the river bank blends well into the sky. It is not a case of one being brighter than the other and distracting the viewer’s eye from the subject. It looks natural, and using the filter has added a lot of dynamic range which also helps with editing later.

3 Stop Hard Grad Filter

The following are some of my favourite images, and ones I feel may not have worked as well without the hard grad filters in my kit. All of the images were taken between October 2019 and March 2020 in some of my favourite locations: the Overstrand on the Norfolk Coast, the Thames Barrier in London, and Cummingston on the Moray Coast in the North East of Scotland.

When to use a soft grad For balance, and to show the result of using a hard grad in the wrong location looks like, take this image from Snowdonia.

It was taken on a rainy evening, after the sun had dropped behind Devil’s Kitchen in the background. The sky was a lot brighter than the dark valley floor, so I had to get as much of a filter effect on the top part of the images as possible. I knew I wanted the darkness of a hard grad, so my only option was to slide the filter down so the transition lay over the tops of the mountains.

It is noticeable, but only if you are looking for it - and with a little bit of editing, you can recover the shadows to disguise it.

However, I am aware that this scene would have been better suited to a soft grad. I was able to get the shot, but it was more work in editing.

Dibs is an award-winning Norfolk photographer documenting landscape, architecture, decay and the history of locations. With both Bachelors and Masters degrees in photography, he is an experienced tutor and workshop leader - he has run workshops for various companies, schools and collages as well as for private clients. Dibs spends a lot of time focusing on his own work, as well as presenting at local schools, universities and even camera clubs across the country.

Find him online at facebook.com/dibsmccallumphotographer and dibsphotography.com

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