 Lee and Hitech filter are popular brands. But, what about Haida? Honestly, I just heard this brand some months ago while looking for filter holder for my Nikon 14-24 lens (read in review NiSi 150 Holder system). So I did a little test for these three filters. Just to give a little more information, Lee Big Stopper and Haida ND3.0 are made of glass, while Hitech ProStop IRND is from resin. For this test, I used Nikon D750 with Nikon 16-35mm f/4 VR. I took the picture while the sun was shining bright. All the pictures below used WB Direct Sunlight (5300/ +7), and JPEG straight out of camera. So, here we go.
Surprise! HAIDA resulted almost no color cast. In other hand, Lee resulted blue color cast and Hitech resulted green color cast. The next pictures below are using White Balance adjustment with Grey Card (located at the center down side of the photo) and then White Balance Selector (pipette tool) in Adobe Lightroom.
Lee and Haida looked natural after White Balance adjustment. For Hitech, beside White Balance, I did tone adjustment too. Still, Hitech is not getting any closer. The result is looked a little bit green. Then, to see how far this three filters will mess the color, I tested it with Color Chart. For this test, I used Nikon D750, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR II. All the pictures below used WB Direct Sunlight (5300/+7). Here are the JPEG straight out of camera files.
Next, White Balance is already adjusted with White Balance (pipette tool) in Adobe Lightroom.
For Hitech Prostop IRND, I tried to adjust it more with Tone and Color Correction but the result is all difference with no filter. For Lee Big Stopper, there is just some difference with some color. For Haida ND3.0, the color resulted is the most accurate. So, for the conclusion, I fell in love to the another option. Lee is still a good filter for sure, but who won’t be tempted with almost-natural-color-10-stops filter? High praise for Haida!!!  |
