Light Pollution Filter SHOOTOUT - Optolong L-Pro v. Astronomik CLS v. Svbony CLS v. Baader Neodymium

Believe it or not, light pollution filters like this one, are increasingly a controversial topic among astrophotographers with some claiming they are a complete waste of money and others saying they wouldn't leave the house without one instead of just injecting yet another opinion into the foray i thought it would be better to do an exhaustive review of four popular light pollution filters under different sky conditions and with different kinds of cameras and share all of my test results and that way you can decide for yourself whether or not a light pollution filter would be worth a purchase. Hello, my name is Nico Carver and my main website is nebulaphotos.com today i am also announcing a new website to go with this video which is astrofilters.com where i will just be releasing test results and reviews of astronomical filters the link is in the description of course if you want to check it out this video was suggested and paid for by my patrons over on patreon if you want to join us it starts at just one dollar per month so the purpose of this video again is to do in-depth reviews of four filters we have the optilong l-pro the astronomic cls the sv bony cls and the bader neodymium and i'll be testing them with various instruments including a spectrophotometer a small telescope and an unmodified dslr and finally a dedicated astronomy camera and my goal with doing all of these tests is to give you information needed to make up your own mind about using these kinds of filters and to pick one out a few notes all my real world testing was done with a telescope on an equatorial mount with these cameras attached to it i don't recommend buying a filter for what we call untracked astrophotography meaning astrophotography on a fixed tripod and you can find my reasoning for that in my video simply titled filters for deep sky astrophotography of course the link is in the description before we jump into the tests one more thing since this is my first full review on the channel i just want to let you know that i'm also publishing a review policy on my websites and also as a video so feel free to check that out if you're interested and part of that policy is to disclose where i got everything for my reviews so let's do that for this video i purchased all of these filters for this review as well as the equipment needed to make the spectrophotometer using proceeds from my patreon the canon 5d mark iii the telescope and the mount were things i already owned and the qhy 168c is on long term loan from qhy directly so next up we have the tests i do use the chapters feature for the youtube timeline so if you ever want to skip ahead please feel free so part of the reason this review ended up taking so long is because i got into my head that i wanted to verify the spectral transmission of all the filters that i was reviewing which took a long time to get that process sorted out with all the equipment that i needed but i did figure it out and i'll just explain the process that i use quickly here i start by calibrating my spectrometer and the software using a neon bulb because neon has very distinct spectral emission lines so it's easy to calibrate against those because we know exactly where those should fall along the spectrum i then use a quartz tungsten halogen bulb from thor labs to shine light through the different filters and understand uh where they're notching out uh different parts of the visible spectrum this little photometer attachment is something i put together and then the light goes through a fiber optic cable into the spectrometer and uh then in through a usb cable out to the computer i'm using theramino software to analyze the spectrum of the different filters and here are the results so this is the opthalong lpro's published transmission curve and then this filled in area is what i discovered and one note here before we go on to the next one because of the the way that a tungsten halogen bulb emits light it's not very sensitive in the the blues especially the deep blues so i'm only confident in my curve from about 450 nanometers up so i just cut it off at that point anything below that because it just wasn't reliable data but anything above that looked quite reliable and so i am confident um in my results but keep in mind that this these are my particular filters that i'm testing so i'm really just testing um the published results these companies put out versus my particular filters your particular filters might be different but this sort of is a quality check on the filters to see how closely they align with what has been published and for the most part they did very well so anyways here's the optilong l pro versus what mine showed and the real only the only real note here is that they didn't um publish that there is a little uh bump of ir around 800 nanometers i don't think that would have any effect on imaging because most commercial sensors are have would have very low quantum efficiency up there in that range so i wouldn't worry about it but i did find that it had a little ir bump out there all right here's the bader neodymium and then here is what mine looked like and it was incredibly close to to what they published the only thing uh was that it cut off maybe a little bit uh sooner than what they published and i thought the 03 transmission was actually a little bit higher than what they published they said it would be around 85 and i found it was more around 90 which is good here's the published astronomic cls and here's what i found they said the notch uh started at around 540 nanometers and in my test it looked like it started more like around 550 nanometers but pretty close close enough that uh i'd say it's pretty accurate and here's the sv bony cls this is what they've published and uh just like the astronomic cls the they said that the the big notch would start at around 5 20 nanometers and my reading was about 10 nanometers off from that it started around 530 and then on this one also where the notch ended was also a little bit off so my filters seemed to have a slightly narrower notch than what was published but that's perfectly fine because it's still cutting out most of that yellow spectrum that most light pollution filters are targeting i should say that the the astronomics cls is not an ir cut filter so uh keep that in mind if you're using a modified camera or an astronomy camera it does not block the ir but if you're using it with a dslr then that would that wouldn't matter and uh same thing with the sv bony cls it's basically a very similar filter to the astronomic it doesn't block the ir but it did seem to have lower ir transmission than the astronomic which was interesting okay let's jump into physical characteristics of these filters starting with the octalong l pro this is what the box looks like and if you open it up it comes with a nice transmission chart and a plain box for the filter this is my preferred kind of filter box comes right out it is a two inch filter as all the ones i'm reviewing are has minimal knurling on the top it measures five millimeters without the threads and about 6.8 millimeters with them it does have the little notches on the inner filter ring so if you do have a spanner like i do you can take the filter apart and measure the actual glass filter inside it measured about 45 millimeters across or 1.8 inches here's the bader moon and sky glow neodymium it has a nice packaging but i don't really like the the wax paper thing that it comes in uh i'd probably lose that and then the filter just bangs around in the box so not my favorite inside the package um it has really nice knurling both on the sides and on the top again 48 millimeter threads two inch filter it's the thickest of the filters that i reviewed at about 5.91 uh millimeters without the threads and about 7.87 millimeters with the threads here's the astronomic cls the only one that has the nice gold foil quality sticker so you know that it's hasn't been tampered here's the inside it has the red foam insert which is typical of astronomic i like this kind of box again the astronomic like the l-pro has minimal knurling just on the top it is the thinnest of all the filters that i looked at at 4.4 millimeters uh above the filter threads and 6.8 if you include them here's the sb bony cls box very plain very plain packaging all around it seems to use the exact same filter mounting as the octalong so minimal knurling on the top smooth finish around the edge and it is about five millimeters above the threads and 6.7 millimeters with them okay now let's jump into the actual real world tests starting with portal 4 with a stock dslr and some of you may be wondering why is test and portal 4 that's not light polluted well to some people it is uh if you're if you're used to very very dark skies then bortle 4 actually does um mean somewhat light polluted um and so i just wanted to test under some different sky conditions to give you a feel for what these filters do uh in a more sort of rural setting like portal 4 but then we'll also jump into a city setting portal 9 which is is basically almost as you know about as light polluted as you can get while bortle four you can think of as you know is still a fairly nice night sky you can you can make out the milky way in the summer and uh you can make out m31 naked high so here's what the north america and pelican nebulae looked like without any kind of filter and a stock canon 5d mark iii and here's that same scene with an optolong l pro and then a beta neodymium moon and sky glow the astronomic cls and finally the sv boney cls and now let's look at some crops this is no filter on the cygnus wall this is the l pro this is the beta neodymium this is the astronomic cls this is the sv bony cls okay next let's look at that same night i shot with an a dedicated astronomy camera a dedicated astronomy camera has no uh ir cut filter or this one doesn't have an ir cult filter built in this is the qhy 168c so instead of going no filter and then comparing the rest for my baseline image i used an astronomic l2 uvir cut filter but it still gives you an idea of of without light pollution filters added what to expect from this camera and these sky conditions so here we go same scene it's a little bit cropped in because this is a crop sensor camera while the 5d was full frame so here is with just the astronomic l2 here is with the optolong l-pro here's with the beta neodymium this is with the astronomic cls this is with the sv bony cls and now let's look at some crops just to the cygnus wall here's the astronomic l2 here's the optilong l-pro this is with the bader neodymium here's the astronomic cls and finally the sv bony cls okay now i'm sure what a lot of you have been waiting for let's look at a really light polluted sky this is from somerville massachusetts which is portal 9 because it's right near boston meaning a very you can this is an actual picture of the sky the night that i took these pictures and you can see that you can barely make out any stars it's just sort of this ugly gray purple color and so these pictures are not going to be as pretty as the ones you just saw because we're under much worse conditions and the north america and pelican nebulae are challenging with a stock dslr meaning one that's not been modified under borderline skies so this should really show the difference that we get with like these light pollution filters so here is no filter this is the optolong l pro this is the beta neodymium this is the astron astronomic cls and finally the sv bony cls let's look at some crops here's no filter on the cygnus wall this is the l-pro this is the baiter this is the astronomic cls and this is the sv boney cls okay and finally to wrap it up let's look at the bordel 9 with a dedicated astro camera here is with just the astronomic l2 the optolong l-pro the beta neodymium the astronomic cls and the sv bony cls and here's some crops this is with the astronomic l2 there's with optilongl pro the baiter neodymium astronomic cls and the svbony cls to wrap it up i'm going to let you make your own judgment about these filters and what might work for you but just to give you a little bit of what i thought my feeling was if you do have a dedicated astro camera or a modified uh dslr and you're shooting under darkish skies like portal 4 then there's really no reason to get a light pollution filter i thought that the astronomic l2 which just cuts off the uv and the ir but doesn't mess with the rest of the visible spectrum looked the best out of all of them my second favorite would be the most gentle of the light pollution filters which was the bader neodymium my third favorite for again a dedicated astro camera or a modified dslr was the uh optilong l pro but it is about fifty dollars more expensive than the bader neodymium and my least favorites were the cls uh because they were cutting out a lot of the light so that you you ended up with noisier images and with worse star color so i didn't really see any advantage to using those under dark skies when it comes to the bortle nine skies with the dedicated astronomy camera i thought that they all did a fairly good job and it's really just up to personal preference but i would probably go with that same order that i said before i'd stick with just the astronomic l2 then the beta the nel pro and then the cls filters now my opinion is pretty different when it comes to the stock dslr with the stock dslr i found that both from portal 4 and portal 9 all of the filters were an improvement over no filter but my favorite um under portal 4 was again the beater neodymium because it had it produced excellent star color and and just as good a result in my opinion as the other filters in terms of the nebulosity but under bordel 9 skies i thought that the cls filters were probably more what people were going to look for in a light pollution filter that they really boosted those red nebulae well the the bader did the worst under bortle 9 with a stock dslr it basically looked just slightly better than no filter and no filter under bortledine was really bad on these nebulae so if you are under very heavy light pollution with a stock dslr and you want to get a light pollution filter i would recommend one of the cls filters they come in at slightly different price points so if you're price sensitive you could pick one over the other but really the cls filters i thought did best with just a stock dslr but once you modify i think going with either no filter if you do an ha mod or an astronomic l2 kind of filter like a uv ir cut filter would be best if you are full spectrum okay so hopefully that was helpful and remember you can go to astrofilters.com to see all of these images again and just look at my reviews in bulleted list format rather than as a video and you can also purchase some of these filters directly from that site through my opt link or in the description and again i'll disclose that i do use opt's affiliate program so if you buy one of these filters through my opt link i will get a three percent i think um three or four percent something like that uh commission but your price won't go up okay this has been Nico Carver my main website is nebulaphotos.com and thank you very much i'm glad to have this review off my back but it's been fun and i hope to do more reviews in the future. Till next time. Clear Skies!

Channel: Nebula Photos

Views: 35,956

Rating: 4.9607363 out of 5

Keywords: astrophotography, astronomy, science, filters, dslr astrophotography, astrophotography filters, astronomy filters, optolong l-pro filter, baader neodymium, svbony filters, light pollution, cls, interference filters, astronomik, astronomik cls, spectrometer, spectrophotometer, photometry, spectrum, theremino, deep sky astrophotography, astrophotography for beginners

Id: Xorp4f05dhU

Length: 21min 4sec (1264 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020