Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

I’m not sure about you but when I hear that photographers are ‘hand holding their graduated filters’, I’m a little suspicious that they can get the accuracy that is required for any sort of creative placement. i.e. If I find it hard to position a grad using a filter holder and depth of field preview on my 5D, how the hell are you doing it by just waving the thing around. Well it seems that I was underestimating the condition that some of these photographic technicians suffer from. I was looking around some photographic video tuition on youtube and found one by Steve Kossack where he demonstrates this “art”. Have a look from 3’51” to 4’15”

Now from what I can tell, this is a 2 stop soft filter on a 24-70 lens which means that the graduation is covering more than the whole of the frame. Effectively, there is about a 1.5 stop filter and whilst he moves it up and down he is just adding and removing about a third of a stop (twisting it around is not doing anything more than adjusting the average angle of the graduation by a ten degrees or so). What he is doing by this maneuver is gradually digging is way through the filter causing scratches and potentially some nasty veiling flare.. I can imagine the conversation when he goes back to Singh Ray with it…

Steve: Hey Mr Singh Ray, Why do I get so much flare with your filters?
Mr Ray: If you look carefully, you may be able to see where you’ve WORN THROUGH THE BLOODY FILTER YOU IDIOT

No disrespect to Steve intended, but I think even if you don’t rub your filters to death, some of the facts of hand holding need to be addressed.

1) “I can dodge and burn certain areas” – no you can’t.. the only shape you can make by twisting you grads is potentially a X but with the top quadrant at 2stops, the side quadrants at 1 stop and the bottom at 0 stops.. Some variations on this are possible (i.e. smaller angle for the top V, smoother graduation between the quadrants) but they all essentially add up the the same. However, if you want to do this sort of configuration (and it can potentially come in handy, I’ve used in the Glencoe valley but with two grads – see below for image) the accuracy you need potentially requires proper mounting anyway (bluetack may be a possibility?!).

2) “I can soften the edge of the grad” – yes you can but if you need to adjust the edge then you must be working with a fairly hard edge grad and if you are working with a hard edge grad you probably need to be placing it to an accuracy of about 5mm or so. Can you guarantee that sort of accuracy hand holding whilst “adding a bit of movement to blur the edge”? Just buy some extra grads.. (If you want to save money then it’s probably worth playing with but you probably want to buy some extra hard grads from Lee so that you have better control).

3) “It means I can work quicker” – yes potentially, although if you have lee adapters on your lenses, I think you’ll find working more accurately is worth the extra 20 seconds to slide a filter into a holder and stick it on the lens.

I don’t suppose I’ll convince anyone to change their behaviour and it seems a trendy thing to do. I make one concession to the technique though.. If you can only afford one graduated filter and no hardware, getting a Lee 2 stop hard and hand holding is probably better than buying a Cokin to save money.