so ive had my Air 3 for about 4 months now and mostly been shooting without any NDs because honestly i kept putting off buying them. finally picked up a set of Polarpro QuartzLines last week and been trying them out and i think i was definitely leaving quality on the table before. the footage just looks... smoother? more filmic i guess. hard to explain if you havent seen the difference side by side.

anyway my actual question is what ND strengths are people actually using day to day. the set i got came with 3, 6, 10 stops and i feel like the 6 stop is the one i keep reaching for but im shooting mostly in the afternoon when its bright out. is there a good rule of thumb people use for picking which one to throw on without doing a bunch of math every time

the 180 degree shutter rule is what most people go by ? basically you want your shutter speed to be double your frame rate. so if youre shooting 4k 30fps you want 1/60th shutter. then you just pick whatever ND gets you close to that at your chosen aperture. once you internalize it you stop doing the math and it becomes second nature pretty quickly.

i shoot a lot in bright midday conditions and honestly the 6 stop does most of the heavy lifting for me too. the 10 stop comes out when im over water or snow where the reflected light is insane. the 3 stop barely leaves my bag anymore tbh

same boat as you a few months ago. I just started using the Kase filters and yeah you can really tell when you go back and look at footage shot without them. the motion blur on moving subjects like trees in wind or people walking just looks way more natural. I was actually pretty skeptical before I tried them but now it feels wrong to fly without them on.