A day spent searching

[blackadder]

Yesterday I spent 5 hours going through the online dealers for what I had assumed would be a simple purchase.
I wanted some filters, 72mm round ones. For my Canon 50mm f1.2L and 85mm f1.4 is L
An ND8 neutral density, an ND 0.6 grad and a circular polariser.
I thought it would be simple, I wanted them all from the same manufacturer, initially B&W, .... they did not do all three, so I tried Tiffen, same result, Hoya, likewise, Canon, no, sigma, no ,even Nikon, still no.
I thought OK I will get a 72 /77 step up ring, no good the lens hoods won't fit with them on.
I ended the day at Wex getting a Canon ND8, and Tiffen circular pol and an "attenuator" ( ND grad). they will take a week to arrive as they are not in stock.
As I said I thought it would be a simple exercise, but everyone seems to use huge rectangular filters, or "fake" it in Photo shop these days.
Oh well, it's not easy being a dinosaur, but I like it.
Charles.

[Stephen Batey]

Possibly I've missed something, but it looks as though B&H could supply your list from the B&W range.

[blackadder]

Morning Stephen, how are you and yours, not heard from you for a while.
I thought so too Stepen but even they did not have stocks of 72mm ND grad!
It seems that 72mm is not a common size, 67 and 77 everyone did them.
It may be that it is used more for wide angle lenses and you can't use CL at all ( causes banding),and ND grads can give a poor result for the sky.
Incidentally, have you done the DXO update from last week? It now lets you use Nick collection in Photo lab.
I did not bother with the Nick update as it came with Photo lab essential and I have Elite already. I wonder if they will do an update just for Nick, apparently it has a lot more pre sets and effects, may be worth getting.
All the best, Charles.

[Stephen Batey]

Fine thanks - I've been looking in but didn't have anything to say!

I've been making good use of a recently acquired Bronica ETRS. Well, I say "good use"; "extensive" might be a safer word as "good" would imply something about the quality of the results.

Pity about the filters. I just checked, and my standard larger size (for my RZ67) is 77mm, bearing out what you found, that 77mm is popular.

I haven't done the lastest DXO update, in part because I don't use the Nik collection (heresy, I know!). I am still impressed with what DXO does with the raw files from my a7rII; some of the things are beyond my Photoshop abilities were I to try to emulate then, and it's so easy as well. Very impressed. Possibly I might think otherwise if I'd stayed on the Photoshop upgrade treadmill, but I stopped at CS2 (CS3 dropped one of the few features I actually used) and Sue stopped at CS5.5. I don't feel any lack. Between DXO and Affinity, I seem to be able to do anything I'd want to, and CS2 handles my black and white films fine.

[blackadder]

I am similar to you, DXO plus Abobe elements 19 for layers etc. I got the elements when it looked like DXO were going, as it could also do the RAWS from my Fuji as well as the Canon.
I tried Affinity free trial but after waiting over half an hour for it to load 60 RAWs from an eventr, and having to crash the computer to stop it, I decided to give it a miss.
Affinity customer care said they were sorry it did not suit my work flow and they were looking at it!
Charles.