Hi-Tech ND Grad Filters (from Formatt)

A while back I bought myself a Lee Filter kit which comprised of a filter holder with an expandable bellows hood.  I also bought a single 0.6ND (2 stop) soft ND grad, and after a bit of faffing a 77mm wide-angle adapter ring.  The cost for this lot: slightly under £200!  Seriously - it's some injection moulded plastic, a bit of machined metal and some carefully crafted polymer without a colour cast.  While I knew this was good stuff, I did believe it was a bit pricey.  So, to get some more filters (a single 0.6ND grad doesn't cut it for all situations), I bought some HiTech filters from Formatt...

The choice you have for external plate type filters seems to be either Cokin (with the A, P and Z-Pro series), Lee, maybe Singh-Ray (not sure if they do square type filters), and HiTech.  Cokin Z-Pro are big enough for UWA lenses on full frame cameras, but the Cokin filters do seem to have a magenta/purple colour cast (I've experienced this myself with some P-Series filters), although they are quite a bit cheaper than the others.  Lee are known to be decent, but are pricey as I've shown above.  From research on the internet, Hi-Tech filters appear to be neutral (i.e. no colour cast) and land about in the middle, with 3 ND grads (0.3, 0.6 and 0.9) costing £100.  And they fit in a Lee filter holder.

I only got them in the post today, and it was rubbish weather out so despite my going for a walk to find a nice location to test them in, I didn't even bother getting the camera out as it would have been wet in 5 seconds.  I will take some shots to show (hopefully) the neutrality and usefulness of the filters, but for now I've got a few shots of how they were delivered, what they look like and a shot of a comparison with the Lee filter I own.

 The filters as delivered - they come in plastic enveloped with a card insert to protect from scratches:

This is one of the Hi-Tech filters in my Lee filter holder - it fits nicely.  The filters are a little thinner than the Lee filters, and appear to be slightly less wide so the filter can twist by about 1-2 degrees in the holder.  In real use, this make absolutely no difference whatsoever, though.

Here are all 3 filters: the 0.9 is in the holder, the 0.6 in front and the 0.3 at the front of the pack.  They don't look hugely different unless you put them side by side.

The following two shots show the Lee 0.6 next to the Hi-Tech 0.6.  The things to note is that the Hi-Tech filter is a litlte thinner, and also appears to be slightly more neutral than the Lee filter.  This suprises me, as the Lee filters are sort-of the standard to go by, but compared to the Hi-Tech filter, they appear to be slightly browner.  I am absolutely happy to admit that my eye's white balance is not to be trusted, so it may be a bit of an optical illusion, and again I suspect that it makes no difference at all in real use.  Anyway, here's the filters next to each other in colour, showing the difference in height and the slight difference in colour tone:

And here's them tightly together to show the height difference - the Hi-Tech filter is nearest and a little thinner (this shot is in B&W to accenutate the filter height difference rather than the slightly distracting reflections):

 I look forward to playing around with these filters - my Lee holder has 2 slots so I can stack them and try out various shots.  I'll report back sometime in the next couple of weeks when I've had a chance to properly test them out...