Review on Tiffen 77VND 77mm Variable Neutral Density Filter: Perfect for Camera Lenses, Black by John Arrow

I hesitated for a long time before I finally bought this variable ND filter. I knew it was important, but I could always do without it for the most part, unless I was shooting in broad daylight with no cloud cover. After making this purchase, I don't know how I went without it for so long. There are a few things to consider when purchasing an ND filter. First you need Tiffen Variable ND. There are a few cheaper ones (around $15 for example) but they are very poorly made and give the footage a dark purple tint when ND is on. Also, cheaper variable NDs don't like zoom lenses, so prepare for awkward colors when zooming in. I haven't experienced any of these issues with Tiffen. There is another much more expensive variable ND from Hoya which I don't think is worth it. money in general. Dave Dougdale did a very detailed review, you should definitely compare several NDs and he preferred the Tiffen optics to the twice as expensive Hoya. It's just personal preference, but if you're buying an ND or any other filter it doesn't matter, buy the 82mm thread if for some weird reason you absolutely don't want to. The reason for this is that they have several step-by-step settings that you can use to change the filter thread. For example, I bought an 82mm thread and an 82-77mm step down, 82-67mm step down and 82-58mm step down ring. Instead of buying a new ND filter for all my lenses and spending hundreds of dollars more, I can now buy an adapter for three dollars. Yes, you will have a much larger filter at the end of your camera and it will look clunky, but you will also have hundreds of other filters in your bag, so that's fine. Technically, I was able to keep a shutter speed of 1/50 at 24 fps and f/4.0 with my A7s on a distant sunny day with a fairly high ND. I once had to increase my f-stop to 6.3 but without NDI I had to shoot at f/22 and was still +2 stops overexposed which just goes to show how much range you can get with ND. If you ever plan on shooting outdoors and keeping the shutter angle at 180 degrees without setting an absurdly high aperture, you need it. There is no other way to express it.