Cokin filter info needed

[seany65]

Hello all.

Does anyone know which range (hopefully one of the cheaper ranges) of Cokin filters is able to work with a 24mm lens as well as a 35-135mm lens, both of which have threads of 55mm and they are used on 35mm cameras?

I've been on Cokin's website and they way they have it seems a little confusing to me. There used to be an "A" range (for amateurs?) and a "P" range (for professionals?), one of which was bigger (or something), now they've got 5 different ranges in 4 different sizes and I can't see any indication that a particular size is suitable for wideangles.

I need someone who has two braincells (twice as many as I have) to clarify things for me.

I'd also like to know if anyone has any opinions on the Square SRB filters, or the square K&F concept filters?

Lee filters are far too expensive for me.

Any help would be much appeciated.

 

[nikon_sam]

I bought in to the "P" series years ago...I have Adapter Rings ranging from 49mm to 82mm.
The Circular Polarizer filter I have will cover about a 73mm or 2.900" lens.
The Square filters measure at 83mm or 3.275"
The opening in the Filter Holder for the P Series is about 74mm or 2.925"

Sounds like the P series should work for you...

Let me know if you're looking for any of these filters as I don't use them at all...

All "P" Series
#120, 123, 124, 125, 127, 129
#026, 027, 028, 083, 084, 086, 087
#173, 665, 671, 820

 

[narsuitus]

I can only speak for the Cokin P filters because that is what I use.

I also use two types of Cokin P filter holders. One type only holds one filter and is thin enough to use on wide-angle lenses without causing vignetting. The other holds up to three filters may be too thick to use on wide-angle lenses.

I use the 72mm Cokin P lens adapter on my widest lens (18mm) and my longest lens (400mm) for my 35mm cameras. Both have 72mm filter threads.

I also have 49, 52, 58, 62, 67, 72, 77, and 82mm Cokin P lens adapters for my other lenses but I do not have the 55mm adapter because I do not have any lenses with 55mm filter threads.

Most of my Cokin filters are rectangular. I do have one round Cokin polarizing filter.


Cokin P Filters by Narsuitus, on Flickr

 

[seany65]

Thanks for the replies.

Sam, Thanks for the info. I don't know the number designations for cokin filters so I'll just say at present I'm only after the three soft grad greys and three ND filters (1, 2 and 3 stop).

I may want the four colour filters for mono.

narsuitus, Thanks for the info. I didn't know they did a single-slot one for wideangles. Do you use it with one of the lens hoods? Also, do you think the 3-slot one work on the 35-135mm at the wide end?


Does anyone know if there are colour-graudated filters, such as Green or Red, from any system, which actually work on mono film as "normal" filters would?

 

[narsuitus]

Also, do you think the 3-slot one work on the 35-135mm at the wide end?

Yes, here is a 3-slot one on a 28mm lens.


Cokin on 28mmm by Narsuitus, on Flickr

 

[seany65]

Thank you narsuitus.

Looks like I'll probably need a 3-slot holder with 2 hoods and a 1-slot holder with 1 hood, all in "P".

 

[Bolo Kukus]

Ah, that iconic square Cokin hood. Back in the day on my Nikkormat EL and Minolta SRT 101 it looked so, hah, 'professional'...

I bought heavily into Cokins in the 1980s. At that time I had all the B&W filters, many of the graduateds, the sepia, diffusers and several polarizers. With adapters they were useful on my Nikkors and Minolta lenses.

They were (in Australia anyway) quite expensive in their day but cheaper than the Nikon filters. I still have the original 1980 Cokin filter guide brochure which makes for an interesting read, if more nostalgic than informative.

A professional photographer I worked with in Sydney at the time cautioned me (in 1984 or 1985) against 'stacking' Cokins on the mount as he claimed they weren't made to particularly high standards and tended to blur images. He suggested that I use only the polarizer which he claimed all the pros made use of at the time.

The sepia was fun to play with and I've kept it, even if the results were almost entirely 'pictorial'. I've not used it for many years but it's still in my Cokin filter 'box'.

I took the polarizer and sepia filters to Indonesia in 1985 and used them together to photograph the temple ruins at Borobudur in Central Java. The results were sufficiently unusual that some of my Kodachromes were used in a German book on Southeast Asia, which thrilled me no end even though the fee I received was very low.

In time I gave away almost all the B&W and graduated Cokins and kept the polarizers (Inow have about six) which I still use. They work okay (just okay) on my D700 and D800 with almost all my D series lenses, but results are somewhat hit and miss with the 21, 24 wide angles.

Entirely anecdotal, this, but may be of interest.

 

[Dogman]

I don't know about the quality of Cokin filters in the 21st Century but I found the filters were dreadful back in the 1970s or 1980s, whenever they were a New Thing. I owned several of them along with holders--I bought 2 or 3 and a friend gave me a bunch. Never got much use out of them, really. I tried using one of them on a 400mm Canon lens once and the view was so blurred I couldn't manually focus and the lens couldn't autofocus. So I tried all the other Cokins on that lens and every single one of them degraded the image so badly I just threw them all away. I kept the filter mount and used it with some Singh-Ray grads.

I've heard people could use the Cokins successfully on wide angles and normal lenses but telephotos magnified the poor quality. Again, I don't know what they're like today but the old original Cokins were terrible.

 

[seany65]

Thanks for the replies.

I did have a set of cokin stuff many years ago (none of the silly prism and star filters etc.) and was always a bit worried about the gap between the holder and the hood, even when only one filter was being used and the hood was as far back as it would go, but I always thought grads that could slide up and down to be more useful than round screw-in fliters.

I've also been looking at other square systems (not LEE and the other expensive ones, they're just too dear), and I like the metal holder of the SRB system (which has front slots that can be removed) and their set of soft-edged ND grads, and I've found out that they do a bellows hood but I've yet to find out how it fits on, or its cost. I have seen a review on youtube which says the don't really work well with telephotos but no detail was given as it was a small section of a review of a number of systems.

I've always thought it could be a good idea to have a Red grad over a blue sky, with a Green grad over fairly light grass etc. using Ilford XP2 (as I've read that filters have stronger effect on this film than others) and it may be fun to try and get a "nearly Infra Red look". But I started to think about the exposure:

"3 stops more for the Red and 2 stops more for the Green (as far as my 2 braincells can tell), so the sky would end up being underexposed by 2 stops, so the pic should get 5 extra stops, so, ummm..."

It's at that point my braincells give up. Luckily, I don't have to think for too long because as far as I'm aware, no-one actually makes coloured grads for mono film.

 

[pomozwi]

I bought into the Cokin A system on a trip to England in 1979. I only bought a few of the graduated filters - grey, tobacco and magenta amongst others. I still have, and occasionally use, the grey graduate and the two stackable lens hoods.

The coloured grads were quite trendy for a while but tobacco and magenta skies soon get tedious and I found that most minilabs had a hell of a time printing from colour negs. Usually required a second trip back to the store to explain that a grad filter was used. I found that some of the minilab operators were OK if you let them know when the fllm was dropped off and they would use 'fixed' settings for printing.

I recently lucked into a Cokin P holder with a 77mm adapter. This is just the right size for the lenses on my Mamiya RZ67. I may spring for a ND grad filter and see how it goes. I'm sure I can fabricate a lens shade from black card to attach to the filter holder.

 

[narsuitus]

I recently lucked into a Cokin P holder with a 77mm adapter. This is just the right size for the lenses on my Mamiya RZ67. I may spring for a ND grad filter and see how it goes. I'm sure I can fabricate a lens shade from black card to attach to the filter holder.

I use a Cokin P holder with a 77mm adapter on my Mamiya RB67.
I use the Cokin Graduated Neutral Density P120 (2 f/stop gradation rectangular plastic/resin soft line).
I also use the Cokin Graduated Neutral Density P121 (3 f/stop gradation rectangular plastic/resin soft line).
I have been informed by others that these two Cokin Graduated Neutral Density filters produce a magenta cast on color images.
I can neither confirm nor deny the color cast because I only use my filters to shoot black and white images.