Light Craft Workshop Fader ND Mk II
£100, $130 for 77mm fitting
The original version of this variable ND filter proved highly popular, and the new Mk II edition has been enhanced to avoid any softening of images at long focal lengths, while also reducing vignetting with wide-angle lenses. However, as with other filters of this type, the amount by which you can increase the effective density is diminished significantly when you’re using wide-angle lenses.
Premier Ink, the UK distributor, is very upfront about this, stating that while a reduction of up to nine stops is available at a 100mm focal length, this shrinks to as little as three stops at 12mm, before a dark cross begins to appear across the image. These figures are for actual (rather than effective) focal lengths when using an APS-C format camera, and were borne out in our tests.