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

I have a Nikon D7200, I'm going to Iceland in a few days and after watching a lot of videos I thought that a ND filter might be a good thing for photographing waterfalls and the sea. A variable density filter seemed like a good compromise as I'm not a pro, will probably only use it a couple of times a year and don't want to invest a lot of money in a filtration system. I really appreciated the Tiffen name and after reading many reviews I thought I would take the risk of buying a Tiffen 82mm VND filter. Photos of a nearby lake for practice (ugly environment but just wanted to get used to the filter). I set the shutter speed to 5 seconds and took a shot with each installation mark. At the maximum level, I saw the issues noted in other reviews, but decided I just wouldn't use the maximum settings. I went back to my office and downloaded the photos to my computer to look at. The first four photos are unusable due to dark areas in various places on the photos. Then I realized that each photo had marks. (If you look along the tree line, you'll see a few marks, particularly on the farthest tree on the right.) I checked my wide-angle lens first, but it was fine. Then I held the tiffen up to the light and found that there were scratches on the lens that couldn't be erased. Then it dawned on me that the used lens was being sold to me as new. As I'm leaving for a business trip in two days I don't have time to order another one and to be honest I don't think I'll get a new lens anyway. So it will be returned. What a disappointment. I'll stop by my local camera shop this afternoon and see what filters they have in stock (last night when I was putting the filter back into the Tiffen box I noticed a note saying Tiffen owed me a filter bag) . and go to their website, register the lens and they will send me a bag. This further reinforced my belief that a used lens was being sold to me as new.