DiscussionND grads in 2025, does anyone still bother or is it all bracket-and-blend now?

Genuine question, not a wind-up. I've got a 100mm holder and a set of soft and hard grads that have lived in the bag for the best part of a decade. I've found myself using them less and less since the Zf, partly because the files hold up better and partly because blending three brackets in post is just easier than fiddling with a holder in a gale on Stanage.

But I still like getting it right in the field, and I don't love the slightly HDR look some blends end up with.

Who's still carrying grads, and who's binned them? Curious whether it's a generational thing or whether there's a real reason one way or the other. Cheers

Binned them in 2019 and haven't missed them once. A grad is a single straight-line gradient applied optically. Real horizons are rarely straight lines: trees, buildings and mountains poking into the sky all get darkened along with it, and you end up with that tell-tale dark band on the top of every tree.

A two- or three-frame bracket blended with a luminosity mask handles an irregular horizon properly and gives you full control afterwards. You can decide how bright the sky should be at your desk instead of guessing on a hillside.

The "HDR look" isn't a property of blending, it's a property of over-compressing tonal range. If you blend and then keep the sky brighter than the foreground, the way the eye expects, nobody can tell. Most bad blends are bad because people pushed the shadows to the moon, not because they blended.

The one honest case for grads is moving water or long exposures where brackets won't line up. Even then, with a modern sensor at base ISO, a single exposure protecting the highlights usually has enough shadow latitude.

darkslide said:

Who's still carrying grads, and who's binned them?

I still carry one 0.9 soft grad. In mountains at sunrise the sky changes every second and I like to see the final image on the screen, not three pieces. But only one grad, not a set. Also with one exposure I do not worry about clouds moving between frames.

rawtherapist said:

Most bad blends are bad because people pushed the shadows to the moon

Fair point, and I've definitely been guilty of that...

darkslide said:

I still like getting it right in the field

With the GFX I rarely need them; the dynamic range is frankly absurd and a single frame covers almost anything short of shooting straight into the sun. But on the RB67 with Velvia a grad is the only option, and I'd argue that discipline has improved my digital work as well.

When you've got ten frames on a roll and each one costs you the best part of three pounds to buy and process, you learn to read a scene's contrast before you've even unfolded the tripod. That habit carries over. I still meter the sky and foreground separately on the GFX out of pure muscle memory, and I think my exposures are better for it.

Getting it right in camera is a skill worth keeping, whatever the blending crowd says. Not because the result is necessarily better, but because the process makes you look harder. And a well-made print from a single, honest exposure has a quality to it I've never quite matched with a blend, though I accept that may be me rather than the method.

I still use grads on the E-M1 II but the second I upgrade it's Live GND for me, it's built into the OM-1 II. Saves carrying a holder up a Munro in the wind, which is half the battle up here.

rawtherapist said:

Binned them in 2019 and haven't missed them once.

And yet half the blended skies I see online look like they were painted by a committee. Grads make you look at the light while you're stood in it, which is the bit people skip when they've got three frames and a mask to hide behind.

I've got a holder, a 0.6 soft and a 0.9 hard, and I use them maybe one walk in three. Bit of a faff in the wind, I'll grant you, and I've lost a holder off Hunstanton cliffs to a gust I'd rather not talk about. But there's a real satisfaction in getting home with a raw file that already looks like what you saw and doesn't need forty minutes of masking. I'd rather spend those forty minutes in the pub, if I'm honest.

Not saying blending's wrong. Saying the grad crowd aren't dinosaurs either... just saying

tomthurlow said:

Grads make you look at the light while you're stood in it

So does a histogram. You're describing a discipline, not a filter.

Ouch. Fair enough mind

rawtherapist said:

Binned them in 2019 and haven't missed them once.

I still use mine with the 5D Mark IV and I see no reason to stop. The optical viewfinder shows me exactly what the filter is doing, which is more than can be said for some of these electronic screens.

Kind regards

darkslide said:

Who's still carrying grads, and who's binned them?

Not a landscape guy but I've got a set of grads in a drawer that I bought in about 2014 after watching one video, and used twice. Honestly I couldn't even tell you which is the hard one now. Would anyone like them lol

OneMoreLens said:

Would anyone like them

Marketplace is that way... though I'd have a look.

rawtherapist said:

Real horizons are rarely straight lines

This is correct, and this is why I use soft grad only in mountains with a clean ridge line, like Tatra from the Polish side at sunrise. In forest, never. Trees with a dark top half look terrible and everyone can see it.

rawtherapist said:

A two- or three-frame bracket blended with a luminosity mask handles an irregular horizon properly

Late, but I'll vote blend, with a side of dad joke: I gave up grads because I couldn't handle the pressure of being so... graduated. Anyway. D850, three frames two stops apart, luminosity masks, done. Takes five minutes.

D850 | 14mm | f/11 | 1/250, 1/60, 1/15 | ISO 64

frank_delgado said:

I couldn't handle the pressure of being so... graduated.

That joke was terrible and you should feel terrible. Interesting how split this is though, cheers all.

Old thread, but I'll add a word for the grads from the Pentax corner, since we're always the quiet ones.

I shoot a K-1 II through an optical viewfinder, as Harrogate does, and a soft grad lets me see the balance of the scene as I'll print it, there and then, before I press anything. On the coast here in Devon the light changes too fast for me to bracket and trust that the waves will line up later, and the sea is never still. One exposure with a grad and the job is done. The K-1 II's sealing helps as well, I'm not wiping a filter holder dry every five minutes on Dartmoor.

I don't doubt blending works beautifully in the right hands, and rawtherapist clearly has those hands. But I've never managed to match the files I get from a single frame and a decent bit of resin. I'm keeping my grads, and I suspect I'm not the last.