Update May 25, 2010:
Watch out when buying the LCW Fader ND on eBay! The only confirmed ebay seller is lightcraftworkshop-official-store, do not buy from “bonifaceleung”! The seller I got the Fader from is called vendilo-torinonord, this is the official eBay store from a shop in Torino, Italy, which is also a confirmed distributor of LCW (however, their ebay store is not officially confirmed).

Check this section on the LCW website for an overview of official resellers.

Update April 14, 2010:
You can now find a sample video of the Fader ND in action at the end of this blog entry and on my Vimeo profile.

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My new Fader ND filter arrived a few days ago and I got to testing it out in the field right in time before my flu knocked me down ;-) And now that I have to spend some time in bed I finally get to share my impressions with you guys.

When I first used my 550D for video shooting it didn’t take much time for me to realize the need of a ND (neutral density) filter when shooting in bright day light. The problem is pretty obvious: Since changing the shutter speed while shooting in movie mode is not a good idea (your shutter speed should always remain at double the amount of the frame rate you chose – ‘180 degree shutter rule’) the only possibility do decrease the incoming light is by stepping down the aperture. But in doing that, you also lose the shallow depth of field. So to be able to use high aperture even when it’s bright outside you have to reduce the incoming light in another way: with a neutral density filter, that is. When buying a ND filter you have to consider the strength of the filter – there are different ones, each of them letting through a different amount of light.

Now since I’m pretty lazy the idea of getting several ND filters and having to try out and find the right one to use in a certain situation didn’t really appeal to me. Fortunately the so called Fader ND filter makes it possible to simply put on only one filter and adjust the amount of light coming through by turning the filter ring. A great concept I thought, so I decided to get one.

The small company that sells these things is called Light Craft Workshop. They don’t have a whole lot of resellers yet, but they sell their filters through their own web shop and on a eBay store. There seem to be some fakes of the Fader out there since LCW is giving clear instructions where to buy and how to make sure the purchased Fader filter is legit. If you’re interested in purchasing the filter from eBay: the authorized seller is called ‘bonifaceleung’.

When ordered from eBay, the item is shipped from the lovely town of Torino in Italy. Delivery was pretty fast, it took something like 5 days to arrive.

So what’s in the package:

What you get is of course the filter in a plastic box, a lens cap since the old one won’t fit any more (but this one doesn’t really fit either, but let me get to that in a sec) plus some sort of string for the people who like their lens cap dangling on the lens. Right.
The brown packaging with the LCW logo looks pretty nice, there’s also a holographic sticker on the back to show it’s the real Fader:

So they did a good job in convincing me of a real product, but how did it perform? First, I attached it to my Canon EF 50/f1.8 MKI lens, which has a diameter of 52mm. It’s also possible to order other sizes of the filter, but they tend to be more expensive. I paid 60€ (free shipping), it’s the same price in $ on the official store. But if you’re unlucky enough to have a lens with a diameter of e.g. 86mm you’ll have to pay … wait for it … 199$ for the filter. That’s quite a bit of money for a filter. Check the website for all prices.

This is what the lens looks like with the Fader attached to it:

Funny: now this cute little lens is so heavy, it makes my 550D tilt forwards:

Some more pictures of the filter:

So I went out to test it in daylight. It works pretty simple: You just turn the ring that’s attached to the filter and the amount of light coming through is being decreased (or increased, that is). There’s also a marker on the filter to check the stop the filter is set to (the fader features 1 stop to 8 stops of light reduction).

To show you how the filter works, I took three shots of the same image. I manually set the shutter speed to 1/50 (as if I was shooting in movie mode with 24 or 25fps) and the aperture to f1.8, ISO to 100.

Now since the shutter speed is set way to low for bright daylight, the resulting image was badly overexposed:

To expose it properly without a ND filter i would have to set down the aperture. In this case the exposure meter of the 550D was happy at f10:

As you can see, not much of shallow depth of field left.

Now with the Fader ND filter I was able to set back the aperture to f1.8 and simply reduce the light utilizing the filter:

There it is again, the nice shallow dof.

Added April 14, 2010:
Check out this video I put together to show you the Fader ND in action. For HD & comments please watch it on Vimeo:

So, as you can see the results are quite nice and the filter is a good investment. I’m happy I won’t have to buy several ND filters but to have all of them in a single one. The quality of the product is great, one minor flaw though: the lens cap is very very cheap plastic and it’s a bit fiddly to get it actually staying attached to the filter; sometimes it just falls off ;-) Plus I kinda miss the Canon logo.

xo