I have had a Sigma 12-24mm lens for a while now and haven't used it that much. It is a really specialist lens and you have to have a lot a patience when using it. However it does give a great new perspective to familiar landscapes.
I decided that for the trip to Saltwcik Bay near Whitby that I would only take one lens with me and it that way I would be forced not only to work a bit harder in order to create a composition but would get in some much needed practise.
As with all super wide lenses, you can't use traditional filters and need to use much bigger filter systems. I love my Lee 100mm filter system and am a total advocate of the brand. However I have never been able to justify the price of investing in the SW150mm filter holder and adapter ring, not to mention the cost of the polariser filter and other bits. When I totalled everything up that I would need, the cost comes to nearly as much as the lens cost! So I chose to invest in a cheaper system. Big Mistake!
I purchased a Benro holder, lens adaptor and also their circular polariser. I also got 3 stop Lee ND and a couple of Lee grads fairly cheaply of Ebay. All in everything probably cost about £300 which still isn't cheap.
Interestingly, Lee don't make a round circular polarising filter for the SW150 system. Apparently the size of it would be just to impractical. Believe it or not their Circular Polariser is square! It's the design, not the shape, you can have a linear polariser or a circular one, just incase you were interested.
Anyway getting back to the main point of this blog. Lee don't make a round polariser yet Benro do. In a fashion it does what it is meant to, in that it does reduce glare on surfaces that reflect light but I have to say it does do half the job that my Lee polariser does on my 100mm system. However by far the biggest issue is the vingnetting. Between 12mm and 17mm it is just disastrous, totally unusable. From 18mm upwards then there are no problems but that's not really the point. I can use my 100mm system, on my 16-35mm lens. It's the wider angle that I want and the aforementioned perspective.
So I guess there is only one option, the Benro kit is going onto Ebay today, I am flexing the credit card and going for the Lee SW 150 system which in all reality is what I should have done in the first place.