Do any of you guys have the Panasonic 7-14mm lens and Lee/Cokin style ND/GND filters? Is it possible to hand hold ND or GND filters in front of it and get good results?

This is the only thing stopping me from buying this lens, so please let me know if you have any experience with this. Thanks!

I have a 7-14, and I LOVE it.

I haven't tried holding a filter in front of it though. The front element is rather large, so I'd imagine it would require a pretty big filter, and a tripod of course. I almost always shoot hand held (and hanging out a car door) so it would require some gymnastics over and above my usual to try it. ;)

Your state is the one out of the 50 I have yet to visit, so if you pop for a ticket I'll fly over and bring my lens for you to try! ;)

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--chuck goolsbee G1
bend, oregon, usa
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
http://photos.goolsbee.org

I'll buy you a ticket in exchange for your lens!

Basically I'm wondering if anyone's ever done something like this:

http://www.naturescapes.net/docs/ind...71-steve-fines

but just holding it in front of your lens.

I had a quick try doing this with a Hitech grey grad and found it didn't work --there seemed to be reflections generated so I quickly gave up. Which isn't to say that with more perseverance, you might not be able to do something.

Thanks for your reply. I'm guessing the reflections were from lots of light leaking in because of the petal shaped hood. If it could all be blocked out I think it could work. I wonder if it's worth the trouble though. Just thinking out loud...

Tape?

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Joep

PS: Try to catch a laugh every day

yes, "is it worth the trouble" is really the question? To be honest, I usually prefer to use the graduated filter in Lightroom and only use the real McCoy in more extreme situations. Of course you need to watch you don't blow the sky in the first place.

Reflections will be a big problem with the universal adapter as the light can get in from behind. It should be relatively easy to cut a donut piece of black card or some dark, dense foam (which could be self supporting).

The Cokin style filters also pick up reflections from the edges of the filters themselves and display them as cloudy patches if you are not careful.

At 7mm, you may find the effects uneven anyway due to the extreme angles near the edges of the frame with light going through more plastic there. It is sometimes an issue with a 9mm lens.

If doing sunrise or sunset, I quite often have to stack a pair of 3-stop grads including a reverse grad. You would have to do an extreme lot bracking and mucking around in Photoshop or anything else and still be more compromised.

I had semi-successful results holding a 52mm filter in front of the Oly zoom lens. But I;m not sure on the the panny ultrawide zoom.