One of the most common questions I get when teaching workshops or talking about long exposures is “Who makes the best neutral density filters?” In contrast to just five or six years ago, most ND filters now are really high performing. But I must confess I too have been curious about which ones are the best. So I took 10- and 6-stop* ND filters from four popular companies (Lee, Progrey, Nisi, and Breakthrough) and put them to a head-to-head-to-head-to-head test. In the test I compared color tint, actual density, vignetting, and sharpness to a baseline, non-filtered photo.
Disclaimer: I am not sponsored by any of these filter companies. However, with the exception of the Lee filter which I purchased, each company sent me their filters for free to test. Nevertheless, this comparison is as unbiased and objective as I can make it. On that note, this is not a scientific, lab-based test. I simply looked at the characteristics that are important to me in a filter and evaluated them based on how I would use a filter. You want science, go follow Neil deGrasse Tyson. You want a real-world usability test, read on!
* Progrey doesn’t make a 6-stop, only a 7-stop, so that’s what I used.
10-Stop ND Filter Comparison
The baseline photo was taken at f/8, 1/6 second, ISO200, WB 3030K, and 18mm. I chose ISO 200 to keep my shutter speeds reasonable as I was shooting indoors. In theory a 10-stop filter requires you to increase your shutter speed by a factor of 1024, meaning I shot my filtered photos at 1024*1/6 sec = 170.66666 sec = 2 min, 51 sec. The 3030K (which LR interpreted as 3100K) was chosen specifically to stay constant throughout the test, though in the second part of the test I chose Auto WB to see if the camera could compensate for any color shifts of the filters.
Here are the first five photos, straight out of camera:
You can instantly see that the Progrey and NiSi filters are excellent, Breakthrough is great but a tiny bit dark, and the Lee is the worst performer (though to be fair my Lee Big Stopper is 5 years old, so perhaps they have a new recipe by now). Let’s take a look at each category in detail.
Color
Arguably the most important feature of a strong ND is how color-neutral it is. And if it is not color neutral, can the color cast be corrected in post? I compared each photo and made adjustments to the white balance until I felt the colors were accurate enough that the average person wouldn’t notice a difference. As you might expect, the Lee required the most adjustment, but the Breakthrough, NiSi, and Progrey almost none at all. Here are the tints, the corrections required, and the color-corrected photos.
| Filter | Apparent Color Tint | WB Correction Required |
|---|---|---|
| NiSi 10-Stop | A tiny bit warm | -100K from 3100K to 3000K. No tint correction. |
| Lee 10-Stop | Noticeably cool and green | WB: increased 1300K from 3100K to 4400K Tint: increased 42 from -9 to +33 |
| Progrey 10-Stop | A tiny bit warm | -100K from 3100K to 3000K. No tint correction. |
| Breakthrough 10-Stop | A tiny bit green | No White Balance correction. Increased tint 4 from 4 to 8 |
Density
Are these 10-stop filters actually 10-stops? That’s the question here. To analyze this I looked at the center of each photo and adjusted the exposure of each till it matched the baseline exposure as closely as possible. The reason I only looked at the center was so that I could separate out vignetting from density as much as possible. Here the Breakthrough filter was the farthest out, at 10.25 stops. The rest performed excellently, each being withing +/- 0.10 stops of 10 stops in the center of the image.
| Filter | How Close to 10-Stops? |
|---|---|
| NiSi 10-Stop | Just slightly darker than 10-stops. Exposure increase of 0.10 stops required. |
| Lee 10-Stop | Very slightly darker than 10-stops. Exposure increase of 0.05 stops required. |
| Progrey 10-Stop | Just slightly lighter than 10-stops. Exposure decrease of 0.10 stops required. |
| Breakthrough 10-Stop | Slightly darker than 10-stops. Exposure increase of 0.25 stops required. |
Vignetting
At this point most of the images are getting very close to the baseline photo. The last main adjustment needed is vignetting. Although the centers of each image have been match in terms of exposure you can see that there’s still some variance in the corners. This, along with color cast, is where the Lee shows its worst performance. The other filters do a much better job of controlling vignetting. I attempted to equalize vignetting in each case by using the lens correction tab in Lightroom, and though I couldn’t get them perfect, they are close.
| Filter | Degree of Vignetting / Correction Required |
|---|---|
| NiSi 10-Stop | Slight vignette. +24 correction. |
| Lee 10-Stop | Strong vignette. +90 correction with a shift in the midpoint of -49. |
| Progrey 10-Stop | Minimal vignette. +11 correction. |
| Breakthrough 10-Stop | Slight vignette. +20 correction. |
Sharpness
Now we’re within a gnat’s ass hair of the baseline photo. Let’s take a look at the last important feature of a neutral density photo: sharpness. In other words, does the filter have some optical deficiencies that blur out the details of your photo? For this test I took the camera outside where it could be on a firm surface (asphalt) to minimize any external vibrations. Here I did quick color and exposure corrections to each photo then compared the corners and center. And to be honest with you I’d be stretching to find significant differences between any of the filters. Heck, I can’t even find any insignificant differences. Maybe if you were in a lab with one of those resolving charts you would see something but in this real-world example I found all of the filters to have no noticeable degradation of sharpness.
Overall Performance
Now let’s take a subjectively objective look at the performance of each filter in each category to determine the best performer. In each category I thought about what would make a filter unusable for me and created a measurement scale based on that, from 0 to 10. For example, I decided that if a filter induced a color shift of 10,000K or a tint shift of 100 it should score 0 on the color scale. That made it easy to determine a linear relationship between color shift and performance. For exposure I decided that every tenth of a stop out of spec would deduct 1 point from the performance score. For vignetting it’s judged out of the maximum possible LR correction of 100. For sharpness there was no need to define a scale since they all performed excellently. Then I summed all the points and divided by the number of categories to get a normalized final score out of 10. These are not standard measurements of filter performance; they are derived by me based on what would make me not want to use a filter for my own work.
| Filter | Color* | Density** | Vignetting*** | Sharpness | Final Score**** |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NiSi 10-Stop | 9.9 | 9 | 7.6 | 10 | 9.125 |
| Lee 10-Stop | 4.5 | 9.5 | 1 | 10 | 6.25 |
| Progrey 10-Stop | 9.9 | 9 | 8.9 | 10 | 9.45 |
| Breakthrough 10-Stop | 9.6 | 7.5 | 8 | 10 | 8.775 |
* Scored as 10 – ((WB Change/1000) + (Tint Change/10))
** (Scored as 10 – (Exposure Change * 10))
*** (Scored as 10 – (Vignette Correction/10))
**** Total points / 4
From this we can see that the Progrey filter is the best overall performer, followed closely by NiSi and the Breakthrough not far behind. As expected the older Lee Big Stopper is not on the same level, though as you’ve seen in this comparison its faults are still correctable, making it a completely usable filter.
Cost
As a final point let’s take a look at cost, since you might expect an expensive filter to out-perform a cheap one. These prices are the most current retail prices, as pulled from each filter’s website on September 12th, 2017. Prices are for 100mm square filters for NiSi, Lee, and Progrey, and the 77mm screw on for Breakthrough.
| Filter | Retail Cost (USD. Not including shipping or tax.) | Value* (out of 10) |
|---|---|---|
| NiSi 10-Stop | $169.99 | 6.71 |
| Lee 10-Stop | $125 | 6.25 |
| Progrey 10-Stop | $144 | 8.20 |
| Breakthrough 10-Stop | $179 | 6.13 |
* Performance Normalized by Price (Final Score * Lowest Price / Filter Price)
The takeaway here is that not only is the Progrey filter the best performer but it’s also the best value, with an outstanding performance for the 2nd to lowest price. The NiSi is the next best value with excellent performance to justify its high price. The Lee is 3rd, since even though its performance is the weakest it also has the cheapest price point. Finally, Breakthrough is last in terms of value as even though it has great performance it’s also the most expensive in this list. The caveat there is that the Breakthrough is a screw-on filter, meaning you don’t need to buy an adapter and holder like the other filter systems, which obviously raises their overall cost. This metric will be factored in in the 3rd part of this analysis that looks at filter holder systems.
Which Filter Should I Buy?
If you already own a filter holder system and simply want the best filter, get the Progrey. Even if you are on a bare bones budget it’s worth spending the extra $20 on the Progrey over the Lee since it will save you lots of time and headaches in post. If you don’t own a filter system already and don’t intent to buy one, or you want to keep your kit small and simple, go for the Breakthrough.
Stay tuned for the next part of this review where I look at 6 stop ND filters and filter holder systems.
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Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!
I reviewed as many articles and videos as possible in deciding on which system to invest in. Your review was very informative and I just bought the Progrey G150Z system for my 14-24mm/24-70mm lens! Can’t wait to see the results for my self. Thanks to Lynn on the GREAT customerservice in deciding on filters and answering my questions!
Glad to hear it was helpful, Mike! And I’m sure Lynn will be pleased as well.
Enjoy the filters!
Thank you for filter review, I was using Nisi 10 stop before but just broken. Then was looking for new one.
If there is better filter. Your review helped me a lot. Thanks again.
Very helpful article here Josh! I may have missed it but are these all circular ND filters or a mixture of both circular and squares?
Hi Tracy,
Mostly they are square filters but Breakthru only makes a circular, so that’s why that one is in the mix. Cheers,
Josh
Hi,
I really enjoyed reading this review, i am definitely interested in the Progrey setup now. It would have been interesting to see how the newest Lee big stopper would do. When are you planning on doing the second part with the 6 stop/ 7 stop filters?
Glad you enjoyed the review, Richard. The 6/7 stop filter section, as well as the filter holder review, is going to have to wait for now. Hustling to get a bunch of projects wrapped up before I head to New Zealand in March.
Cheers,
Josh
Hi Josh,
Thanks for the great filter review. Are you still looking at doing the 6-stop and filter holder segments?
Best,
Lee
~~~~~
Hi Lee,
Glad you enjoyed the review! Yes, still planning on doing the other segments this summer when I have a little more time.
Cheers,
Josh
Hi Joshua, just wondering if you managed to get the second half of this review done? I’m still really looking forward it.
Oh man, not yet! Got sidetracked by other projects. But keep asking me if you don’t see it by this summer.
Hi,
With summer nearly over, any chance of seeing the other half of this review?
Regards
Richard
Aye carumba, thanks for the reminder! This had completely slipped my mind. I actually just got another filter kit from Haida so I have even more to compare. I’ll try to jot some pros and cons down soon about each of the holders. Cheers.
Hi,
I’m still looking forward to the 2nd part to this review, any chance yet? As you’ve updated your website I don’t know if you’ve done the review already and I can’t find it, if you have do you mind posting the link?
Thanks again
Richard
Hey Richard,
Good question. To be honest, I’ve been avoiding writing part two because I have yet to find a filter holder that’s perfect. They’re all good, but they also all have flaws. Here’s my very quick summary:
– If you use a polarizer with your filter holder most or all of the time, go with the Nisi holder. It’s very high quality and fairly easy to use. But it’s a pain to remove the polarizer if you don’t want to use it.
– If you never use a polarizer then I’d recommend Progrey because it’s the simplest and cheapest.
– If you are constantly taking your polarizer out and putting it back in, then I recommend Haida’s holder. They have by far the easiest system for removing and adding a polarizer through an interesting cartridge system. But there are a few extra pieces to keep track of because of that.
Hope that helps!
Josh
Can I suggest that you think about including the new Firecrest Ultra range from Formatt-Hitech in the future?
Hi Bruce,
I’ve heard good things about the Firecrest, but haven’t used them. Here is an exhaustive filter review that does include them:
https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2017/07/nd-filters/
Cheers,
Josh
I went for the Nisi filter system. Performance is great. What REALLY sold me is the way the circular polarizer functions in the holder…
Hi Frank. I agree about the NiSi holder: it’s the best solution I’ve seen to the polarizer problem so far.
Awesome Josh, Im going to give Progrey a try. Hope you are doing well my friend. Thanks for sharing
Cheers, Mike!
Hi Josh, I really liked your effort to compare 10x ND filters and a guidance to decide which one to go for. I really appreciate once again but what do you say about the very popular and sought after The More Slow 10x ND Singh-Ray filter. It’s a very well used filter among most of American top Pro photographers. Is it posible for you to rate this filter at some point? Kind regards.
Hi Rajinder,
It’s been a long time since I’ve used a Singh-Ray Mor Slo, but as I recall it had a strange brownish tint to it.
Cheers,
Josh
Hah, I just ordered the Lee yesterday.
Ha! Well, to be fair, the Lee is still totally usable. It just takes a little more work in post.
there are some brands very cheap and so amazing with minimum color cast ,
Like Andoer ND filter 10 Stops , i ordered it from Amazon i think for only 15$ i decided to try it and what results i discovered was very brilliant , it is not glass filter but i loved it and i made review around it , only need little bit correction because it is little darker , but i advise everyone to try it , here is my review :
you can order it from amazon :
Hi Maen,
It’s hard to beat that price! But some of the other reviews indicate it has some issues with color cast and sharpness.
Cheers,
Josh
Awesome test . Thank yiou very much for sharing .
Hi Joshua,
Just curious as to why you did not evaluate Breakthrough’s X4 ND 10 stop square filter. They make a 100mm square and a 150mm square in I believe 3, 6,10 & 15 stops for the 100mm version and 3, 6 & 10 stops for the 150mm version.
I have the 3 and 6 stops 100mm square and are very happy with them.
Keep up the good work. Love your blog and videos.
Hi Stephen, I wish I could say I had a methodical reason for not testing that filter but the real reason is that they simply sent me the round ones to test.
Great article Josh, this is so comprehensive! I used to have the Lee (but it shattered) and I probably would have bought it again had I not read this. On the whole Lee glass breaking issue, what are NiSi, Progrey and Breakthrough made of?
Hey Chad,
Glad you enjoyed it. Bummer about the Lee but at least it’s an opportunity to invest in a better-performing filter. The other filters are all glass as well, so all shatter-prone if you drop them.
Cheers,
Josh