Centre spot filter on 45mm for street photos?

[ian paterson]

Hi - after many years of using my Xpan only for landscapes with Velvia, I'm loading it with XP2 and heading out into the streets for a change. Should I leave the 45mm centre spot ND filter on the lens or can I get away without it for street work?

Thanks,
Ian.

 

[tlitody]

I say you were better placed to judge that since you have the camera, lens and filter and have used them. what do you think?

 

[Rob-F]

I don't bother with the center filter with the 45mm lens, even with Velvia. I use a center spot filter only with the 30mm lens. The 45mm lens on the XPAN is the same in horizontal coverage as a 25mm lens on 24 x 36 format. I don't find the edge falloff that significant. If you do, another idea might be to use a lower contrast film, for street work. It might be more forgiving of the random light variations in that kind of shooting, as well as minimizing falloff.

 

[ian paterson]

Thanks guys - I use the filter for landscapes since there's often large areas of same colour/tone (eg sky) and thought the fall off would be more obvious than with B + W street shots. I'll go without to reduce the amount of glass in front of lens.

ian.