Most reviews suggest they are well made however a good product sold by someone who doesn't care for their customer is not a product not worthy of being bought. @TassieFig would you post an honest review to this thread? When I search for "Breakthrough Photography review" this thread doesn't show up. It needs more visibility to protect other photographers from the treatment Graham Clark puts them through.
When I checked out their site, I got one of those live chat pop ups with Graham asking if I had any questions. I was tempted to respond with a link to this thread, saying that any questions I might have were pretty much covered right there. But I valiantly resisted the urge. ;-)
According to the reviews I read from US and UK, Haida ND filters seems very comparable to Breakthrough in term of optical quality: no color shift and no loss of sharpness. Haida wins on 0.5mm tinner (3mm thickness) and cheaper. While Breakthrough wins on the brass material and handling (easy to take off)
Never heard of Haida .... Sounds like more Chinese crap to me! I have an Olympus filter on my 40-150! My polariser is B&W. I'll take German quality any day!
For the record, I admit that in my initial email to Graham, I did exaggerate a bit by saying "full of basic errors". I found at least 3 of them by a glance. I guess he wrote that stupid article and took it really personally when I pointed out the mistakes.
Not to beat on a dead horse any more, but whenever i see someone's webpage/e-mail is loaded with grammatical or factual errors, i step away or reserve judgement.
Same for misleading pro-forma invoices or hidden costs.
It does not show professional attitude with approach to potential customers, and I always have the presumption they don't care for quality control of their products/services. As i said in my previous post, anyone with a business that is strictly online, such as Breakthrough photography (what an arrogant name, btw), needs to be extremely prudent in those matters.
Online reviews are tricky. Someone can bury your product with a word of mouth, with no one actually knowing their name or if they bought the product in the first place (not Felipe, obviously). On the other hand, someone can up their stats with paid likes/reviews. Caveat emptor, as they say.
sorry for the late reply, I've been buried in work lately. Yes, I will when I find the time. For now I can only say that is feels and looks like a very nice product. I'll share my thoughts on performance later. We all know about the customer "service"...
Never heard of Haida .... Sounds like more Chinese crap to me! I have an Olympus filter on my 40-150! My polariser is B&W. I'll take German quality any day!
You should do some more research then. Haida ND filters have actually proven to be of very high quality, introducing no color shift and not degrading sharpness at all. I would know, as I own one of their 10-stop ND filters and have used it extensively.
While we're on the subject of "Chinese Crap", I recently purchased a Daisee MRC Variable ND filter for roughly $60 from eBay. I tested the filter when I received it, and sure enough, quality results. No degradation of image sharpness, no color shift, and no signs of cross-polarization until you got to 7 stops.
Call it Chinese Crap all you want, but a lot of these filters are actually quite good, often times performing as well if not better than the leading name brand filters.
Why can I get a lens that is full of many elements requiring grinding and polishing, all of which are coated, yet a single piece of flat glass with a coating can cost almost as much as a lens? Something isn't right there, and I'm betting that the margins on filters are absurd.
Sad ! If Leica made a lens with a $500 front element and you stick a cheap filter in front .... Its not going to differ? Ask Leica !
I don't need to do more research. IF I (rarely) need a filter, Its German ! I have NEVER in my 40 year professional career needed to use a ND filter ... NEVER ....
Sad ! If Leica made a lens with a $500 front element and you stick a cheap filter in front .... Its not going to differ? Ask Leica !
I don't need to do more research. IF I (rarely) need a filter, Its German ! I have NEVER in my 40 year professional career needed to use a ND filter ... NEVER ....
Ahhh... I remember you now from another thread, stating similar sentiments.
Maybe you don't need certain filters for the type of shooting you do, but ND filters are actually useful. Long daytime exposures, longer exposures at dawn/dusk than would be possible by just stopping down, variable ND filters for maintaining exposure while filming, etc. Despite what you say, ND & CPL filters are purposeful tools for photographers enabling them to get shots that they wouldn't normally be able to get.
Below are a couple shots I took where I used a Haida 10 Stop ND filter (you know, that Chinese Crap)
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Now, I remember you saying over the the other thread that these same shots could have been achieved simply by waiting until later so there wasn't as much light available, and taking them again. But sadly, that wouldn't work for any of the above photos.
The shot of the London Eye wouldn't have worked because after a certain point in the night (not long after I took the shot), they turn the lights off. So, in order to get the blurring of the lights with the blue/purple sky in the background, I needed to use an ND filter. Shooting it any later, and the lights would no longer be on, and I wouldn't have achieved this shot.
The picture of the sunrise down on the River Thames with City Hall and London Bridge wouldn't have been possible by shooting it earlier in the morning. The shot was taken at roughly 4:30 AM, and shooting it any earlier would have resulted in there being not very much blue in the sky. There was only about a window of 15-20 minutes where the sky was red/orange/blue. Any earlier and it was all orange, any later and it was all blue. Also, that 15 minute window isn't very long when you're taking 3 minute exposures to get movement in the clouds and smoothing of the water (try shooting a 3 minute exposure at sunrise without an ND filter).
The last picture is of Big Ben & the Westminster Bridge. It was taken at about 10 PM, and is a 4+ minute exposure. Again, waiting until later in the night to get the same shutter speed would result in all of the color being gone from the sky. In order to get the orange/purple/blue sky with the clouds, it needed to be shot fairly close to the time it was taken. Waiting even an extra 15-20 minutes wouldn't resulted in a sky with no orange in it, as the sun would be well below the horizon. Again, this is an example of a shot that wouldn't have been possible without the use of an ND filter.
So, like I said earlier, just because YOU don't use ND filters doesn't mean that they're not a useful photographic tool.
Oh, and about using only quality, GERMAN glass, the Haida filters supposedly use Schott glass, the same stuff used in your prized, high quality, GERMAN filters.
Lastly, here's a good read where the author uses Haida filters yet again to generate some beautiful landscape shots. But I guess he would have been able to achieve these same results just by waiting a big longer, right? http://www.manateevoyager.co.uk/haida-10-stop-nd-filter.html
No, I won't ask Leica since they sell their own very high margin filters which having been tested prove to not be any better than much less expensive ones. I'll stick with independent research and testing rather than the vested interests of a company trying to sell me something.
I rarely use filters myself, far less now in digital days, and prefer quality filters that have been shown through testing to produce the most minimal degradation to image quality possible. Some of these are German, many of them are not.
And what a sadly boring career you must of had if you never had the opportunity to try long exposure daylight photography. It isn't everyone's cup of tea to be sure and I can understand that if you are a pro you need to pay the bills rather than enjoy exploring other genres. But your comment makes me once again glad I've not done photography for pay, too many of the "pros" seem to suffer the same myopia as you appear to.
Ahhh... I remember you now from another thread, stating similar sentiments.
Maybe you don't need certain filters for the type of shooting you do, but ND filters are actually useful. Long daytime exposures, longer exposures at dawn/dusk than would be possible by just stopping down, variable ND filters for maintaining exposure while filming, etc. Despite what you say, ND & CPL filters are purposeful tools for photographers enabling them to get shots that they wouldn't normally be able to get.
Below are a couple shots I took where I used a Haida 10 Stop ND filter (you know, that Chinese Crap)
I got my set of Haida Slim PROII ND. I haven't got a chance to shoot outside yet. But from my indoor + patio testing shots, I can tell that overall they look very promising (3, 6 and 10 stops). Only the 10 stops show very very little yellowish color shift and some darken edge at 15mm FF len. I tested them with Fuji XT-1 + 10-24mm len.
Yeah, I get a small amount of color shift with my 10-stop filter from Haida as well, but it's so easily corrected in post that it doesn't matter. That's pretty impressive that you can use it at 10mm on an APS-C sensor and get minimal vignetting.
I'm glad to hear that you're happy with your filters. It goes to show that you shouldn't always listen to the marketing machine, and it pays to do your research because you can find some really good deals out there.
Never heard of Haida .... Sounds like more Chinese crap to me! I have an Olympus filter on my 40-150! My polariser is B&W. I'll take German quality any day!
If they were VW, it would be a 10x filter whenever you took photos with it, but if you tried to measure the color shift of the glass, it would act like a filter ring with no glass in it!
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