Singh-Ray Filters

[neuroanatomist]

Does anyone have experience with Sing-Ray Filters vrs B+W filters? When reading and viewing each's respective descriptions on their own sites Sing-Ray comes off as the best thing since sliced bread. Are they or is it marketing?

For the most part, their product lines (at least, the more popular ones) are non-overlapping. As I stated elsewhere,B+W is excellent for round/threaded filters, but they are not the place to go for rectangular filters. If you want a graduated ND filter, B+W's circular ones are not a good solution (the quality is excellent, but for creative purposes you almost never want the graduation in the middle of the image). B+W also doesn't make anything like the Vari-ND filters offered by Singh-Ray. Singh-Ray does make excellent resin graduated ND filters, and their variable ND filters are also nice.


But, I do think there's definitely a big element of marketing hype in Singh-Ray's products. Here are a some reasons that I feel that's the case:


There's a statement in Singh-Ray's FAQ, "<span>Q6) Are your filters multi-coated? A:No. We have carefully evaluated multi-coating of filters, and in our opinion, the benefits are negligible, and outweighed by several disadvantages." Personally, I'd like to know what those purported disadvantages are in Singh-Ray's opinion, and how they were 'carefully evaluated'. To me, that sure sounds like a marketing statement. It's pretty generally held that multicoated filters result in less reflection and ghosting/flare/glare than single-coated or uncoated filters. In fact, although Singh-Ray states that their filters are not multicoated, they don't state whether they are single-coated or uncoated. I like to know what I'm buying. Maybe it's ok if their filters are uncoated, though - their RayVu cleaning solution, "...applies a crystal-clear coating to resist fogging, dust, and finger prints [and] ...tends to slightly increase light transmission and color saturation."Personally, I like my filters to be (multi)coated and my cleaning solutions not to leave a residue behind. But, that's me.


Another reason is transmission curves, which provide a quantitative way to evaluate filter performance. B+W publishes their data, both separately and at the back of their filter handbook. Hoya's data are at the back of their catalog. Where are Singh-Ray's? Apparently, they don't make them available.

[Ryan Marko]

If you can afford it, get the sing-ray filters. I just bought the vari-n-trio (580$ for the slim version) and it is absolutely fantastic. It

[seacritter]

I have the Daryl Benson 3 stop reverse grad. It is an amazing filter. I also have the Hitech SS and HS grad series as well. As to my polarizers, I

[Ryan Marko]

The Singh-Ray blog is great. Checkout the home page, I