Dears Sirs,





A question to all of you skillful photographers here on this excellent forum - about a gradual filter (GND) solution to a Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L?





Please have anyone of you been using CanonTS-E 17 f/4L in field as a landscape lens?


I have tried to take this lens outdoors and found out that it is not easy to overcome the big differences between the light sky and the rather dark ground.


I am not very good with Photoshop so taking two different exposures and merging them into one seems not very attractive to me.


Also the clouds on the sky are constantly in movement so the two exposures that I had tried to merge did not quite work and to some degree I feel that this is a bit of making at least a little step back from being authentic to the landscape view.


(By the way I use only .cr2 - files now a days. But have not got the Adobe Lightroom 3 yet - maybe I would need that program?)


But again - I found out that there is some filters that could be useful I think the dimensions should be something like 130mm X 170mm in order to not getting vignetting issues. And also how much of ND effect is needed (how many stops is normal between sky and ground? 2 or 3 stops? is that enough or will only 1 stop darkening be enough and also - does these filters be safe to use in order not to degrade the IQ as result?)


Or is there any other way around this problem with light skies and dark ground-differences?


I would very much appreciate your input and wise advice in this matter with this particular lens - or maybe I should purchase the Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II which use 82mm filters?





Best Regards,


Charl


Sweden