History
Graduated filters were used in the early twentieth century, for example for darkening skies in landscape photos. One advertised brand was called the "Lifa graduated filters for sky, cloud, and landscape photography. These "sky filters" were not necessarily neutral, since they were used for black-and-white photography, and sometimes used a yellow top half to darken blue skies more. In a discussion at the Royal Photographic Society in 1910, some "debatants" held the use of such "graduated color screens" to be quite limited.
In more modern times, the use of graduated ND filters was popularized by Galen Rowell. Singh-Ray sold them as "The Singh-Ray set of 4 Galen Rowell Graduated Neutral Density Filters."
Although its importance may have lessened with the advent of the modern digital darkroom, graduated ND filters are still an important tool for professionals because a digital sensor that is clipping ("blown out" or "washed out") captures no usable data in the clipped area, an effect which cannot be corrected with later processing because data has been lost.
Read more about this topic: Graduated Neutral Density Filter
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