I’ve been using a couple of Fader ND filters with my prime lenses for a while now, the Fader ND’s are useful because they allow you to adjust for bigger lens apertures in daylight conditions without the need to keep swapping filters.

One thing that is a bit annoying when using Fader ND’s though is that it’s no longer possible to attach the Canon sun hoods that are supplied with the lenses.

While I was out shooting some external pickup shots yesterday I experimented with using a Hoya Screw in Rubber lens Hood on my 50mm 1.2 and 35mm 1.4 lenses. It’s quite strange using these on the fader ND because to adjust the level of ND you end up rotating the entire lens hood, it works well though!

The Hoya hoods are able to be set in two positions allowing you to use them with a range of lenses from medium wides out to zooms.

Unfortunately the Hoya hoods only go up to 77mm which means they can only be used on lenses up to 72mm in diameter because the Fader ND’s step up a size. Both my 35mm 1.4 and 50mm 1.2 have a 72mm thread so the 77mm Hoya Hood work well on those. On the 35mm the hood needed to be in it’s closed down setting so that it didn’t appear in the shot on my 5D mark2.

My 24mm 1.4 and 70 – 200 2.8 are 77mm so with a 77mm fader ND fitted the hoods won’t work on those as the required diameter is then 82mm. The 24mm would likely be too wide for the sun hood anyway, plus the Fader ND’s are not recommended on long zooms so you probably wouldn’t want to use the hoods on either of those lenses anyway.

By far the best feature of the Hoya hoods has to be the red line on the end – full on L series looks for just a few $! ;)

Buying in the US: B&H sell the Hoya hoods for around $25.

Buying in the UK: Warehouse express sell the Hoya hoods priced from £12 – £40 depending on size.

If you’re looking for Fader ND filters they can be purchased from B&H for $62 – £139 depending on the lens diameter you need.

I’ve been asked a few times about the method used to create slow motion shots using 50p or 60p footage. This process applies to clips from Canon DSLR’s that shoot 50 or 60 fps at 720p, the GoPro Hero HD, Sony EX cameras and pretty much any other camera that will shoot 50 or 60 frames per second.

I’ve created two video tutorials showing two different approaches to conforming video clips with Cinema Tools, one describing batch conforming and the other showing how to conform individual clips from within Final Cut Pro.

Click here to read more and comment.

I’ve been trying out Singular Software’s pluraleyes plugin for Final Cut Pro over the last couple of weeks and I’m really impressed. Pluraleyes makes a huge difference if you’re working with DSLR’s or multiple cameras and multiclips in Final Cut.

Click here to read the review and comment.