Photo Tip - Neutral Density Gradient (NDG)

For those that don't know me yet, I am not the type of photographer that believes equipment is everything, or that gets into endless discussions about Nikon vs. Canon, Raw vs. Jpeg, or that carries a ton of lenses and accessories in my camera bag. First, even if I wanted a ton of equipment, I wouldn't be able to afford it. Second, I would give up photographing because I would not be able to deal with the weight. 


However, there are a couple of accessories (light ones of course!) that I like to have around. One of them being my Neutral Density Gradient (NDG) from Cokin. My passion in photography is landscape and NDG is mandatory to achieve the best results. 

Image 1 - Cokin system
http://www.cokin.fr/ 

Let's start from the beginning! Neutral Density Gradient is a filter that allows the intensity of light of an image with a bright sky and a dark foreground to be perceived and photographed in a more homogenous way. The filter has a grey colouring that gradually diminish throughout the frame. The grey colour does not affect the image hue, only the intensity of the light. 


The result is skies without clipping areas (white areas without pixels) or black foregrounds that have no pixel information. In sumary a better image overall! Of course that you can use the filter for other types of images and not only sky vs. foreground exposure. Actually, the other day, I used it upside down to darken the snow foreground of an image.      

Here is a comparison of two images that have not been processed in photoshop yet to illustrate the use of Neutral Density Gradient filter. On image A, taken without NDG, the sky and the snowed peaks are just too hot, or a big white mass. There is no definition. Even if you try to process and improve the image in photoshop, there will be no information for the system to work with. Photoshop can do many things to improve the image, but the program can only work with the information that comes from your camera. 

Image A - without Neutral Density Gradient filter

Image B - with Neutral Density Gradient filter

On image B, taken with NDG, the sky and the snow peaks have more information to work with. So, when processing this file in photoshop, I will be able to use curves to improve the overall image.  

After processing the image (very briefly) in photoshop, this is the result that was achieved. If I did not have the Neutral Density Gradient filter in the camera, I would not have been able to separate the cloud on the sky from the snowed peak on the right corner of the image.  

Image 2 - Processed image with NDG in photoshop

Tip: I leave my camera view mode in the Highlight opion, this way it will automatically blink if there is any clipping on the image. Right after checking for the clipping, I switch view mode to histogram to assess the overall exposure.