My control image straight out of camera using AWB, no adjustments apart from resizing to 1200px.

Control-1

Control Image

Yesterday I tested 4 different ND filters of 1.2, 1.8, 2.4 and 3.0 th object being was looking at colour casts. Sadly the weather was cold, windy and very grey so only short exposures were made – sub 15s. The first image below is straight out of camera with just resizing to 1200px.

First look with AWB the most neutral is the little stopper when compared to the control image. The contol image was filterless.

AWB

In camera auto white balance

The image below is a single point white balance correction to the image above, the selection point is marked as a white dot, same place on all images including the control image using the eyedropper tool in Lightroom 6.4. This brings the results much closer with the 4 stop Hitech being the least neutral, I’m sure with a couple more adjustments this could be improved.

control-adjusted

Lightroom Corrected AWB Image

The image below is with the in camera white balance setting set to Cloudy, no adjustments apart from resizing to 1200px. Here the Hitech is looking the best and with the 8 and 10 stop looking the worst.

Cloudy-wb

In Camera Cloudy WB Image

Once again the image below is a single point white balance correction to the image above, the selection point is marked as a white dot, same place on all images including the control image using the eyedropper tool in Lightroom 6.4. This brings the results much closer with the Little Stopper and the Firecrest being closet, I’m sure with a couple more adjustments this could be improved.

cloudy-adjusted

Lightroom Corrected In Camera Cloudy WB Image

In camera AWB with the 2.4 Firecrest ND and the Lee 0.9 grad, no adjustments.

Firecrest-plus-grad

Firecrest And ND Grad

In camera AWB with the 2.4 Firecrest ND and the 1.8 Lee Little Stopper, no adjustments. (14 stops)

firecrest-plus-little-stopper

Firecrest & Little Stopper

In camera AWB with the 1.2 Hitech and the 1.8 Lee Little Stopper, no adjustments. (10 stops)

hitech-plus-firecrest

Hitech-Formatt & Little Stopper

 

Conclusion: whilst differences straight out of camera they can easily be corrected in Software. I would like to do further test with stronger sunlight and more colourful settings with longer exposures as I know correcting in Software in those circumstances is much more difficult.

Looking at both the Little Stopper and the Firecrest side by side the glass in the Little Stopper is much blacker than the dark brown/gold of the Firecrest.