Summary: It helps

Comment: This filter certainly helps even out the light in the photo. Looks to be about 1 stop. Wish I knew about the Cokin filter holder at the time. Live and learn.

Summary: Quality filter - has worked fine for me.

Comment: Have not had too much chance to use this. But when I have, it has worked fine. I will be adding another ND Grad w/2 greater density for more flexibility. Have combined w/a ND non-Grad as well to get longer exposures and that worked great. Well made !

Summary: Quality Filter

Comment: I'm not going to get into why one would want this specific type of filter - there are books on the subject that will go into a lot more detail - here is one example - there are many: The Photographer's Guide to Filters (Photographers Guide).

What I will review is quality of this product. B+W filters are made in Germany. Germany is consistenly one of the best producers of high end glass and optics. I have been told the reason the quality of these filters is better than most is that they don't make them as separate units, but instead they build a cylinder of glass and cut each filter off of it. Consistent quality. Screw ring is hard metal, so it is very difficult to strip the threads. I have messed up the threads on cheaper brands by accident.

In my experience, buying filters falls into the category of you get what you pay for. Cheaper brands are out there, but if you want a very high quality filter, that is durable and consistent with what you want to achieve with it... you can't go wrong with B+W filters.

Be sure to choose the right size - for example, Nikon prints the size on the back of the lens cap.