Filters, filters, did I mention filters?

[fjrabon]

I think you're totally missing the point of a G-ND.

I get that they have a place. My point was simply most things most people use them for are better done in post. Not blowing a sky out is one of those things that is easy enough avoided without the blunt tool of a GND filter.

It looks way more natural to manually bracket and then just layer mask in a sky than using a ND filter does.

 

[fjrabon]

There was an enormous DR difference between the shadows of Thor's Well and the bright highlights of the setting sun. I would be tempted to say 9 stops.

Here's the best I could do with 3 stop HDR bracket (-2, 0, +2). You can see that I wasn't able to fully reel in the sky, all processing techniques exhausted. In a situation like this, it would be ideal to have a good ND grad filter. A dark one, too.

Lots of seascapes, especially shot at sunset here on the west coast, have a very large DR difference between the sky and foreground rocks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rotanimod/8073395567/
Point of No Return by Majeed Badizadegan (Rotanimod), on Flickr

I wouldn't have done an auto bracket and I wouldn't have done HDR. I would have done a manual bracket and exposure blended. It's a more subtle tool than GND is. Again, not saying they're useless, more saying that people use them a lot of times when today in the digital age we have better tools.