What are the real advantages of ND filters?

[Nigel]

FTP and HTTP are Acronyms they stand for--

File Transfer Protocol(FTP)
I think HTTP is Hyper Text Transfer Protocol but either way they are acronyms.

[Sonic Truth]

No, they are abbreviations.

An acronym has to form a new word: NATO, AIDS. etc. are abbreviated, but also form a word in itself.

[calgodot]

Sonic speaks/writes the Truth:

ac·ro·nym A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging.

ab·bre·vi·a·tion A shortened form of a word or phrase used chiefly in writing to represent the complete form, such as Mass. for Massachusetts or USMC for United States Marine Corps.

Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

[skyliner]

Sonic. None is never 'not any'. The Oxford dictionary says its from not one.(old english nan from ne(not) an (one) Find me a dictionary that says it's 'not any' and I'll eat the page!

"I lost a filter in an hotel bedroom."
Also correct!

[Scotness]

Wow when I logged on tis morning I saw there were two pages on ND filters - I thought I'd opened a hornets nest - then I read this

Okay well this is what I say - and I think it's probably fairly uniform through out Australia - don't know about elesewhere where they speak English:

An goes before any word starting with a vowell sound - except for those starting with h - eg you would say "I had a horrible time" not "I had an horrible time" -- although you do sometimes hear "an horrific" now that I think about it - but generally it is not used for h words

"None of my filters is missing" should be "None of my filters are missing" because "filters" is plural - it has nothing to do with the none bit

Calgodot's definitions of acronyms and abbreviations are correct.

Anyway who cares - I heard English is the hardest language to learn because of all the irregularities in it - we try and butcher it as much as we can here in Australia :lol:

Now back to ND filters - I guess my question has been answered

thanks all

Scot

[calgodot]

Wow when I logged on tis morning I saw there were two pages on ND filters - I thought I'd opened a hornets nest - then I read this

I thought the same when I saw the 2-page thread. Now it's starting to remind me of one of those really long threads we used to do back in the olden days (circa 1996): eventually the messages have little or nothing to do with the topic, which eventually becomes The Longest Thread Ever.

An goes before any word starting with a vowell sound - except for those starting with h - eg you would say "I had a horrible time" not "I had an horrible time" -- although you do sometimes hear "an horrific" now that I think about it - but generally it is not used for h words

"In choosing a or an, consider the sound (not the spelling) of the following word. Use the article a before all consonant sounds, including sounded h, long u, and o with the sound of w (as on one)."

Source: Gregg Reference Manual, Eighth Edition

"None of my filters is missing" should be "None of my filters are missing" because "filters" is plural - it has nothing to do with the none bit

"In formal usage, none is still considered a singular pronoun. In general usage, however, none is considered singular or plural, depending on the number of the noun to which it refers. No one or not one is often used in place of none to stress the singular idea."

Source: Gregg Reference Manual, Eighth Edition

Calgodot's definitions of acronyms and abbreviations are correct.

They were from the dictionary, so I hope they're correct! But seriously: my familiarity with all this stuff comes of being a writer and spending much of your time in dictionaries, encyclopediae, and grammar texts. (Not to mention my HS English teacher.)

Anyway who cares - I heard English is the hardest language to learn because of all the irregularities in it - we try and butcher it as much as we can here in Australia

I didn't have nay problems learning English, in spite of being raised in the Deep South!

I once owned a dictionary of Autralian slang that was big enough to kill someone if you dropped it on their head. Gave it to a friend who was moving to Oz, who ended up having to have the book shipped because it was too heavy to take on the plane in luggage!

Now back to ND filters - I guess my question has been answered

I also use ND filters in order to stick with one stock, usually really fast, and use it both indoors and outdoors. Lately I've developed a crush on Fuji's 500D Reala film, which is great indoors as it is fast and handles mixed color temps (that 4th layer is some voodoo shit). But at 500ASA in Los Angeles daylight you'd never get a shallow DoF as you'd be stopped down to F22. I use my ND filters more than any other filter.

I don't think anyone has mentioned that the primary characteristic of an ND filter is that it does not alter the color temperature of the light entering the lens. I mean, you can cut light by using a Red 25 or even an 85A, but those also shift the color balance. The ND is Neutral and Dense.

[Sonic Truth]

If I said "My first roll of super 8 film came back the other day, I was none too pleased with the results"

that would make sense, but "None" in this case couldnt mean "Not One"

My point is, that "None" doesnt really mean anything anymore.

But in the case of "None of my filters are missing", None has to mean "not any".
whether the dictionary says so or not.

Anyway, be prepared to eat the page this came from Skyliner:

\None\, a. & pron. [OE. none, non, nan, no, na, AS. n[=a]n, fr. ne not + [=a]n one. ?. See No, a. & adv., One, and cf. Non-, Null, a.] 1. No one; not one; not anything; -- frequently used also partitively, or as a plural, not any.

this is from my Oxford English Dictionary.

luv from me.

[calgodot]

If I said "My first roll of super 8 film came back the other day, I was none too pleased with the results"

that would make sense, but "None" in this case couldnt mean "Not One"

Parse it and you may see that it does:

"My first roll of super 8 film came back the other day, and I was not one too pleased with the results."

It is awkward, yes, but correct. Dropped the "too" and it goes a little more smoothly.

(That's a very British sentence construction, by the way. Very passive voice.)

My point is, that "None" doesnt really mean anything anymore.

Sure it does! It means "none!" Which could mean, "not one" or "not any." In general usage, it can be either singular or plural. Which means both "are" and "is" are correct in the sentence, "None of my filters is/are missing."

If not one of your filters is missing, then not any of your filters are missing. None of them are missing. They are all there, even if there is no there there. Am, is, are, was, were - these are all states of being, and states of being are mutable in both space and time. As someone more famous than me once said, "It depends on what is is."

[Sonic Truth]

Parse it and you may see that it does:

"My first roll of super 8 film came back the other day, and I was not one too pleased with the results."

It is awkward, yes, but correct. Dropped the "too" and it goes a little

To parse and re-construct correctly, if i dropped the "too" i would have to replace None with "in no way"

it just goes to show, that "none" has no real ,specific meaning anymore, i.e "Not One" as Skyliner pointed out.

[skyliner]

"Words mean exactly what I want them to mean, nothing more, nothing less"
Lewis Carrol

Back on thread, one small catch with using heavy NDs is that the viewfinder fades off into the mist, especially with something like an old bolex H16, so you have to use the numbers on the focusing ring. Great on a static shot but a real piggy if you want to shift focus while panning.

[Jordan]

Its "a ND filter"... and "an acronym" because you can't say "a acronym because then you have two vowels in a row, so you have to add the 'n' after tha 'a'.

A car

A house

An aligator

An instigator

[Jordan]

Actually...you might be able to say "an ND filter" because its how it sounds, and when you say ND you are sounding out the letters title, not the sound the make, so N in ND sounds like "EN", E is a vowel, so I suppose it actually would be "an ND filter"