What's wrong with cheap ND filters?

[Andy_Hodapp]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66627224@N02/sets/72157634078219248/

This is what I have gotten from my Neewer ND fader on my 50mm 1.8 II, I'm pretty impressed with it

 

[leGreve]

What you pay for in expensive brand variable NDs and what you DONT get in cheap ones:

- Control over vignetting
- Little or no color cast
- Sharp images
- No cross hatch issues (since variable NDs are merely two pol filters twister against eachother)

Those are all big issues for me, and definitely not something I would go on compromise with because of money...........

The best budget filters seem to be Heliopan and Genus. And then we have Tiffen and BW who continue to provide good stuff.
Don't buy expensive lenses and then degrade them with shit 3rd party ebay items. That's just silly...

 

[Marsu42]

Color cast and soft images will find your way with inferior filters.

With strong nd filters you get a color cast anyway due to infrared leaks, b&w or heliopan, it doesn't matter - if you want to circumvent this you have to add an ir blocker (not possible to stack these for <35mm) or buy a more expensive combined hot mirror ir - nd filter.

 

[AcutancePhotography]

Every Nd filters has some kind of colour cast, some allot others a bit...

Good point. What you want is one with the leastest colour cast.

 

[Waterloo]

This was just posted on the Planet 5D blog: http://blog.planet5d.com/2013/08/formatt-hitech-release-the-prostop-irnd-long-exposure-filter-kit-joel-tjintjelaar-signature-series/

It might be of interest.