Comparative test Nisi 10 stops vs Formatt Hitech 10 stops

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Comparative test Nisi 10 stops vs Formatt Hitech 10 stops
nov 12,2016

Pedro Quintela is an Educator, Storyteller and landscapist.
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Despite being a History professor Pedro Quintela is above all a photographer guided by his profound need of storytelling, that he tries to capture in every single frame. He also writes about photography and makes tutorials. He also known by his motivational skills.
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As you know using ND filters is the way to reduce the amount of light to your sensor allowing us to use a higher aperture for more time. The exposure is then adjusted to the exact time we need to make a creative image.

The problem that we have in some occasions and in particularly with cheap products is that kind of filters will degrade the final image. It´s a no brainer that putting a sheet of glass in front of your precious lens has to be the best possible, otherwise big color cast will appear, among other annoying situations.
So here today I did a small test to see how good could be the Nisi Nano IR ND 3.0 versus the Hitech Pro Stop 10 ND Filter, that I used for a long time with very satisfactory results.
How the test was made
I used a Canon 6d camera, with an Canon EF-16-35 L F/4 IS lens, a remote control, the same settings and the proprietary holder system of each brand. Also the viewfinder was blocked to prevent any light leak that ruins our long exposures during the day.
Both are well made, of aluminum, quite solid with particular points. Comparing the two shows that despite the Hitech is more simpler the Nisi model is a step ahead because allows to use a polarizer before the filters and in the other brand we put it at the end. So here the Nisi wins because it means that you can change filters and maintain the polarizer in place withouth having the need to remove it. Though for our particular test the polarizer weren’t´t used, just both 10 stop filters.
The Images and Edit

The images were made in Raw, with the same settings, auto WB, manual focusing, the same light and trying two different exposures of 69 and 130 seconds, at F/ 13 and F/11 and Iso 50. Mirror lockup and remote control were also used. The viewfinder was covered for avoid any light leaks as we told before.



The edit was adjusting exposure, contrast, WB, whites, blacks, and sharpening. So it hadn’t´t any intrusive editing like using presets or custom settings for any personal style. It was done on Lightroom CC.
No bias editing was made, of course, we tried to recover the best details out of each file withouth attention to the brand of each filter.
We try a real life test, the one that we all can do with a little of patience with our gear.
The Tests 
We present the files side-by-side with the same settings, with the before and after with details included.







Conclusions

We were a bit skeptical of what Nisi could when compared to such a fine brand as Hitech. But as our test showed the results were really good for the Zuhai located brand.
The holder has the unique feature of having a proprietary CPL behind the filter slots with its own wheel to rotate it. It´s a big plus. The Hitech system is easier to use but don´t have it and also don´t include 4 adaptor rings in the kit, being each one very expensive.
One of things that we all want in filters is to have the less intrusive color cast and quality materials that don´t degrade the image quality. During our tests the colors delivered by the Nisi 10 stop filter were much lesser color casted then the very bluish Hitech. The brand says that´s on purpose to help getting bluer skies and water, but in our opinion the Chinese company does a better job.
Of course that the cast is corrected very easily in processing but the less intrusive cast on Nisi gives us more room to fine tune the WB and the toning. Beside that we saw a little better detail when zooming at 100 the images. It makes also almost not visible vignetting another very important feature.
The Nisi Nano IR ND 3.0 has, in our opinion, one of the best ratios value/ cost  in the competitive filter range of todays market.

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