67mm filter on a 77mm lens

meddyliol

Senior Member
I have two filters, a 67mm ND and a 67mm Polariser. I have two adapter rings to use on two of my lenses, the problem is one lens has a 77mm filter size. Is it feasible to use an adapter ring to use the 67mm filters on a 77mm lens? This would save my buying 77mm filters. Is it really worth putting an ND or Polariser filter on a 10-20mm wide angle lens?

Thanks

Brian
 
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480sparky

Senior Member
If you're going to have blue skies in your shot, a polarizer on such a wide lens is going to show part of the sky much much darker than the rest.

And if you're dropping down from 77 to 67mm, you may well end up vignetting either filter.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
If you put an adapter ring on your lens, you will want to get a step up ring, not a step down ring. A step up ring means the filter is smaller than the diameter of the lens. A step down ring means the filter is larger than the lens. It's better to buy filters in the largest size you might need and buy step down rings to accommodate smaller diameter lenses.

As Sparky mentioned, it will probably cause vignetting. I tried using a CP filter on my wide angle zoom - full frame body with 18mm lens. It didn't work well. A CP filter (circular polarizer) will alter the color of the sky only when you are facing a certain direction to the sun. And while that sounds good, the problem is the view from a wide angle lens is greater than the area of the sky that gets changed in color. So part of the sky is dark while other parts are light. It makes the sky look kind of splotchy.
 

meddyliol

Senior Member
Thanks a lot. Is it worth getting a 10 stop ND filter for my 10-20mm lens? Also, I am sure that I read somewhere that ND filters can be used to 'eliminate' people etc from a picture. I really cannot get my head around that. Why do they 'disappear'?

Thanks

Brian
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Thanks a lot. Is it worth getting a 10 stop ND filter for my 10-20mm lens? Also, I am sure that I read somewhere that ND filters can be used to 'eliminate' people etc from a picture. I really cannot get my head around that. Why do they 'disappear'?

Thanks

Brian
Technically speaking they don't. What you read could have been a couple different things but most likely what they were saying is with a long enough exposure, say, 1 minute in duration, something like a person casually walking through the frame would not be in the frame long enough to be visible in the final shot. Now if a person were to verrry slowly walk through your frame during that one-minute exposure, maybe stopping and freezing in place for a few seconds while they did so, you could get some "ghosting" of the person in the final shot which could be used for creative effect.

You might have come across another technique, called Median Stacking, that's commonly used to remove crowds of people from places like landmarks and what not, but that requires multiple exposures in lieu of a ND filter; though I guess you could use them in conjunction with one another.
 
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meddyliol

Senior Member
Thanks for that, it explains a lot, that 'ghosting' effect looks interesting though. I still don't know if it's worth getting a 77mm ND filter, maybe investing in Cokin P filters and some adapter rings would be the best bet.

Brian
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Thanks for that, it explains a lot, that 'ghosting' effect looks interesting though. I still don't know if it's worth getting a 77mm ND filter, maybe investing in Cokin P filters and some adapter rings would be the best bet.

Brian
Depends on how often you think you'll need it. If you do, or anticipate doing a lot of long-exposure photography you're probably going to want one. I have a few ND's but the more extreme they are the less I tend to need them. I use a ND8 (3 stop) rather frequently, the ND1000 (ten stop) not so much. Step Rings are handy, and a definite money-saver, but I also find them mildly annoying. Like most things photography related, it's a bit of juggling act.
 
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