FAQ

This depends on: the type of photography, the type of equipment, and the requirements of an individual situation.

There is no simple answer, most professionals will carry a selection of both. Hard Grads tend to be used on smaller format cameras (DSLR or 35mm) and are used for general landscape shots with a definite horizon.

Soft Grads tend be used on larger format cameras or on very wide angle lenses and are used for balancing exposure evenly, when there is no definite horizon i.e. in cities or other situations when you may have an uneven skyline.

The LEE Filters Big Stopper redefined long exposure when it was first launched in 2011, and it is still as popular today as ever.

The slight blue cast is easily removed in post production using the colour temperature slider, but a lot of photographers leave it unchanged - the cool look and slight vignette on wider angles give that classic Big Stopper image that is still so popular.

If you want a long exposure filter with no cast and no vignetting, the LEE Proglass IRND range is also available.

We have received feedback about our Stoppers causing light leaks and strange magenta colour casts on images. Whilst this may suggest a faulty filter, the problem is usually caused by common user errors.

The viewfinder MUST be covered during long exposures on both film and digital cameras. If left uncovered, light will ingress and find its way to the sensor, causing the flare lines and magenta casting that seem to indicate a faulty filter.

The filter must be placed in the rearmost filter slot, with the foam making a seal onto the filter holder body. A LEE Holder must also be used - other brands of holder do not have an adequate design to ensure a light free seal.

The viewfinder must be covered during all long exposures, regardless of the amount of ambient light.

Follow these guidelines to prevent light leaks and magenta color casts, ensuring your LEE Stoppers deliver the high-quality results you expect.

For general use, the 0.6ND Medium Grad is a good starting point. Even if not the ideal filter for every situation, it will make a noticeable improvement to almost every picture on which it is used. Balance exposure between bright skys and dark foregrounds, capture more detail and reduce the need for edits to the finished photo. 

Unfortunately, LEE do not make centre filters to correct light fall-off at the extreme edges of wide angle lenses. These filters are exactly matched to the particular lens in question and are generally supplied by the manufacturer of the lens.

Most photographers will use the minimum number of filters possible to obtain the image – up to three filters should not have any major detrimental effect, but bear in mind that anything on the front of your lens will decrease the image quality to some degree.

As a general rule, Grad Filters are used to balance the exposure across the image, therefore the clear portion remains correctly exposed, and the coloured area affects the brighter portion of the image – the exposure should be set before the filter is fitted, and should remain unchanged when the filter is in place.

There is no difference in the effect on the final image. The difference is in the technical way that the filter manages the light at wavelength level.

Linear polarisers provide standard polarised light with all lightwaves vibrating in the same plane, whereas circular polarisers will polarise and then spin the lightwaves.

The internal optics that control focussing or metering in some modern cameras cannot work with standard polarised light and therefore a circular polariser is required. The information on which type is needed can normally be found in the instruction book for your camera.

Please note that although this lens has a 105mm filter thread, the lens design does not allow an SW150 / 105mm adaptor ring to fit effectively.

Unfortunately, we do not currently have a solution for this particular lens.

There is no hard and fast answer to this, lens specs and designs change all the time, as do the filter holder requirements.

However, as a rough guide, using:

A simple holder setup with 2 filter slots, and no lens shade a DSLR (small chip) will go down to 10mm.

A 35mm & Full chip DSLR will go down to 16mm.

A medium format 645 & 6×6 will go down to 35mm. A medium format 6×7 will go down to 45mm.

A larger format 5×4 camera will go down to 70 – 90mm.

Bayonet adaptor rings for such cameras as Hasselblad and Rollei fit into the inner bayonet lens fixing.

The standard size for the LEE100 Filter System is 100mm wide, however, we also have the LEE85 (85mm) and the SW150 (150mm) filter systems for more specific uses.

LEE Resin filters are individually hand made, the 2mm Optical Resin is cast in our factory, hand dyed and cut to give a very high quality product both in colour accuracy and optical quality. They are hard wearing and ideal for use on location.

Polyester Filters are made on a master roll, the colour being coated onto the surface of the clear polyester base material. Because the filters are very thin (0.1mm) the optical quality is high. Polyester is a good, low cost alternative to Resin, but because of the manufacturing process polyester grads are not available.

The Glass Filters that LEE offer tend to be specialist filters that are not available in other materials, such as the ProGlass series or polarisers. They are hard wearing and scratch resistant.

Wide Angle Adaptor Rings have a countersunk thread to allow the filter to be positioned as close to the lens as possible, maximising angle of view. 82mm is the widest we can manufacture that still allows the filter holder to attach and be effectively behind the adaptor ring, any wider and the holder could not attach.

The LEE Field pouch is sized for the 100mm system filters. The pouch takes up to 10 filters and will take the new Landscape polariser in the rearmost filter slot. The pouch is not waterproof, but the material is treated with a water shedding additive during manufacture to make it shower resistant. Additional resistance can be gained by treating the pouch exterior to a waterproofing spray (such as Nikwax) every so often, however in very bad weather, it is advised that the pouch would be better worn under a coat or stored in the camera bag.

Buy the Field Pouch 

The main design concept behind the pouch was having the ability to hang the pouch from your tripod while shooting - at the time this was a unique idea and it made using the filters while on a shoot very convenient.

Our resin filters are quite delicate, and they need to be stored flat and with even pressure exerted across the surface if stored for any extended period of time (they can bend or warp if not). Glass filters (especially our stoppers) are brittle and can also be easily broken in storage (which is why we supply them in a tin).

The ideal way to store any quantity of both types of filter is together, in a flat block where they protect each other, like layers of laminated glass - once your filters are in the closed Field pouch, they are extremely hard to damage, even if you try (which of course, we have). Introducing a hard, unevenly shaped item like the filter holder or adaptor rings into the pouch would mean the addition of larger compartments and a lot more padding to protect the filters from damage, easily doubling or possibly trebling the size of the pouch - in all likelihood making the pouch too big to fit inside your camera bag (we made sure the field pouch would stand on edge inside the most popular camera bag brands when designing).

The filter holder and adaptor rings are very tough - virtually indestructible in normal use and they don't really need protecting in a pouch like the filters do. The holder and rings can be stuffed into any pocket of a camera bag or rucksack with no chance of them coming to harm, and of course when shooting, the holder and rings are in use, on the lens and do not need to be hung on the tripod for quick selection.

I hope this helps explain our thinking when designing the Field Pouch - you cannot please everyone when inventing products for mass market but we believe the filter-only pouch is the most sensible compromise for a pouch for use when actually shooting images - maximum capacity in a minimum size, with the filters protected and conveniently hung on the tripod for quick access.

The foam light seal only fully seals when the holder is fitted to an adaptor ring. The gaps you can see are normal and will be fully sealed against light leaks once the holder is on the adaptor ring and in use. The filter must be placed in the rearmost filter slot, with the foam making a seal onto the filter holder body.

No, unlike Glass, Resin Filters are made from optical polycarbonate, which cannot be polished to remove scratches. If they are minor scratches, you may be able to keep using the filter normally. For deep scratches, you will need to replace the filter.

You can try to polish minor scratches using a plastic or resin polishing compound, or a fine automotive scratch remover specifically labeled for clear plastics. But results will vary.

Resin filters should be treated as you would a lens, or pair of glasses. Clean with a lint-free cloth. To remove greasy fingerprints a cleaning solution such as ClearLEE Filter Wash can be used. Salt spray should be dissolved in warm water and the filter dried and cleaned as usual.

LEE Resin filters are made of an optical polycarbonate resin, and should be treated as you would a lens, or a pair of spectacles. Clean with a lint free cloth for general use, and if necessary a lens cleaning solution to remove greasy fingerprints. Salt spray should be dissolved in warm water (not hot) and the filter dried and cleaned as usual.

LEE Filters have developed our own cleaning solution - ClearLEE Filter Wash. 

Individual resin filters are supplied wrapped in paper, in a soft LEE pouch. The paper can be discarded once opened and the filter can be stored and transported like this for normal use.

Resin filter sets are supplied in one of our three filter wraps, again wrapped in tissue when new. These wraps are designed to take minimum space in your camera bag, but do not offer much protection against physical damage.

We recommend that if your filters are to be stored for long periods without use, then this is best done in a cool, dry place, in one of our Field Pouches.

Buy the Field Pouch

The ClearLee Microfibre Cloth is used to keep your filters clean and smudge free. It can be cleaned in the washing machine on a gentle cycle.

When you see numbers like 0.3, 0.6, 0.9 on Neutral Density (ND) filters, these refer to the optical density of the filter—essentially how much light the filter blocks. Optical density is measured in absorbance, and each increase of 0.3 represents a doubling of light reduction.

Here’s how it works:

0.3 ND = 1 stop reduction = 50% light transmission
0.6 ND = 2 stops reduction = 25% light transmission
0.9 ND = 3 stops reduction = 12.5% light transmission

In other words, the higher the number, the darker the filter and the more light it blocks.

This is useful because ND filters allow you to control exposure without changing aperture or ISO. For example, you might use them to achieve slower shutter speeds for motion blur in water or clouds, or to shoot with a wide aperture in bright light without overexposing the image.

So those small numbers (0.3, 0.6, 0.9, etc.) simply tell you how many stops of light the filter reduces—and therefore how dramatically it will affect your exposure settings.

What is a blender filter?

An ND grad filter (Neutral Density Graduation) is half colour and half clear, and either changes with a hard or a soft graduation across the middle.

Soft grads are ideal when there is no definite transition between sky and foreground, for instance woodland, mist & interiors. Whereas Hard grads have a tighter graduation between the dark and clear areas of the filter. This allows the photographer to selectively adjust exposure across the frame without affecting colour balance

A blender is a filter that is ND at the top, and clear at the bottom, but changes gradually over the entire length of the filter. Used for interiors and undercover / woodland type photography.

Graduated neutral density (GND) filters are used to balance exposure between a bright sky and a darker foreground. The terms hard and soft describe how quickly the filter transitions from dark (neutral density) to clear.

Hard Graduated ND Filters  A hard grad has a very abrupt transition between the dark and clear areas of the filter. Transition length: ≈ 5 mm Appearance: Sharp, defined shift

 Best for:

• Flat, level horizons (e.g. seascapes)
• Scenes where the sky and foreground meet cleanly
• Maximising control over very bright skies without affecting the land

Because the transition is tight, hard grads offer precise exposure control—but only when the horizon is clearly defined. 

Soft Graduated ND Filters A soft grad has a much gentler transition, so the density fades gradually from dark to clear. Transition length: ≈ 15 mm Appearance: Smooth, subtle shift

Best for:

• Landscapes with mountains, trees, buildings, or uneven horizons
• Scenes where you want the gradation to blend naturally
• Wide-angle shots where a hard edge might become too noticeable
• A soft grad is more forgiving when the horizon isn’t straight or when elements in the scene rise above it.

Why the transition matters

The transition controls how naturally the filter blends with the scene.

Too hard for a jagged landscape → you may see a dark line across mountains.

Too soft for a bright, flat horizon → you may not darken the sky enough.

Many photographers carry both types so they can choose based on the scene.

Most smaller digital compact cameras don’t include a threaded lens or adapter ring, which means there’s no built-in way to attach filters securely. While you can try holding a filter by hand in front of the lens, this often interferes with the camera’s automatic functions—especially autofocus and exposure metering—and can easily introduce unwanted reflections or misalignment.

However, larger compacts, bridge cameras, and mirrorless cameras (such as Micro Four Thirds systems) are much better suited to using filter systems. This is because:

• They typically have threaded lenses or accept adapter rings, allowing filters to be mounted securely and precisely.
• Their lenses are physically larger, giving filters more surface area and making them easier to attach without blocking sensors or autofocus systems.
• They offer more advanced manual controls, meaning you can adjust focus, exposure, and white balance to compensate for the effects of filters—something small compacts often limit.
• They often support interchangeable lenses (mirrorless systems especially), so you can choose lenses specifically designed to work with circular or square filter systems.

Their higher-quality optics benefit more from filters, such as ND filters for long exposures or polarising filters for contrast enhancement.
Overall, if you want to use filters easily and reliably, a larger compact, bridge camera, or mirrorless system is far better equipped for this than a small point-and-shoot compact.

In photography, a stop is a standardised unit of measurement in photography that describes a doubling or halving of the amount of light that reaches the camera’s sensor or film.

Increase exposure by one stop → you double the light.

Decrease exposure by one stop → you halve the light.

Stops are a foundational concept because they let you compare and adjust exposure consistently across aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and neutral density filters. Each of these settings can change the exposure by full stops, half stops, or third stops, depending on how precisely the camera allows adjustments.

Why stops matter

Stops give photographers a standard way to understand the effect of changing any exposure variable.

For example:

Going from f/4 to f/2.8 = +1 stop (twice as much light).

Changing shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/500 = –1 stop (half as much light).

Increasing ISO from 200 to 400 = +1 stop (the sensor output is amplified by one stop).

This shared “language” of exposure lets you balance settings creatively—such as maintaining exposure while changing depth of field or motion blur.