I just couldn’t help myself, I ended up buying a reverse graduated ND filter (circular). It arrived on Monday (26/04) and I have not yet had the opportunity to use it. But I can’t wait to try it.

I bought a Kase filter, which I was under the impression was a German brand – don’t really know why. When the product arrived, it was a Chinese product. A bit of a bucket of cold water on my expectations, but let’s not stress about minor things. If the product is of high quality, there is no reason to snub at the fact that it is a Chinese product.

One of the attractors for me to buy it, was the fact that it uses Schott glass which is (in theory) scratch resistant. The other two were that it was waterproof (kind of expected), had pollution prevention and “ultra low color cast” (which is the whole purpose of the filters being NEUTRAL density).

Upon receiving the package and trying to open it, I found that it was in fact very difficult. The top opening was GLUED to the box, making it impossible to open the box without ripping it. Good thing I was like Yogi bear (smarter than the average bear) and used my Stanley knife to cut the sides so that I wouldn’t rip through the important looking information, such as the serial number and authenticity labels.

Once I got the filter out of the box I was, again, slightly disappointed: the Nisi GND filter I have looks INFINITELY better than this one. That does not make this product a bad one, it is just not as impressive looking as the Nisi one.

Putting “looks aside”, the frame seems very firm, the glass is hopefully scratch proof and, fingers crossed, the (reverse) GND of the filter is adequate and appropriate to the work I want to do. Just a reminder: the work I want to do with it is, in theory, the reason the filter was created.

I’m hopping that this filter will eliminate, or significantly reduce, the need for HDR in these scenarios (below).