Help with grad filter system paranoia

[markmullen]

I swear by my Lee system, I've never had a problem with flare, even shooting into the sun. I use the Lee lens hood whenever possible but haven't had that long and used to shoot without it without issue, I just make sure my filters are clean, no fingerprints etc.

 

[torger]

I would guess that having a bright area to the side of a wide angle, double the grad filter with a center filter under it increases the risk of reflection greatly, and top that with pushing two stops. Without pushing it's hard to see the fog.

As I nearly always use a workflow where I cancel out the gradient with LCC (like here) and then digitally tonemap in post (not rarely adding in a virtual gradient as a part of the tonemapping) dark stuff gets pushed so there's an increased risk issues like these get visible compared to the traditional workflow where the gradient effect is kept as-is out of the camera.