RafaPolit wrote in post #12184153
Ok, you are going to get some WOWs, some Uhhhs, some Ohhhs, and some drooling from many people in here, me included!
.
I always praise people that can actually live up to the "lenses first and better than body" rule that is always preached but seldom actually carried on. You are living prove of that, and with your lens choices if ever you decide to upgrade to a FF, you won't need to purchase a single additional lens, so you can even have a better-than-5DmII in the future, but you have right now the best quality of images available. Kudos for that!
About ND filters... I bought a cheap Tiffen one for my 18-55 (58mm thread) and a much more expensive Hoya one for my 70-200 (67mm). There is a difference, clear and noticeable. While the Tiffen does the job, you can see haloing and fringing, but it has very little hue change. I find the Hoya much better in all respects, you almost don't notice the change in IQ but is has a slightly more evident hue tint. I don't mind tint at all, it can be fixed if needed, but since its warming, I actually like the effect.
Now, I have a 17-55 of 77mm thread and I need yet another one for the lens. Seeing this trend, and seeing that its not like UVs that need to stay on the lens at all times (at least for me!), I recommend getting a good ND filter (I'd go with either Hoya or B+W) of the largest diameter and buying step-up-rings which can be had for very little.
For your lens lineup, you are even on better ground, since all your lenses have a 77mm. The donwside is that filters cost proportional to the diameter, so your filters will not be cheap. The best part is that you can buy once and it will fit all the lenses you posted above.
As to NDs, they come in different strength. You can find from 1 to 10 f-stop reductions. I think 3 f-stops are the most helpful, as anything less is probably easier done changing camera settings. 3 is a nice sweet spot. But, if you want to drool a little (as you made us drool with your lenses
), head over to this thread:
Post your 9 or 10 stop ND photos Some day I'll have one of those. At 10 f-stops, a picture that will normally require 1/30th to expose properly you actually need 35 seconds to expose properly. So, at dusk or dawn when you would need around 1 sec to expose properly, you can actually expose for 17 minutes! Its not for everyone, but some of the results are just breathtaking.
You can also stack the filters, so, a ND8 (3 fstops) and a ND64 (6 fstops) on top of each other are equivalent to a 9 fstop filter.
So, a final link to what would be my choices for 77mm ND filters:
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Hoya HMC NDx8 - Filter - neutral density 8x - 77 mm (3 stops)
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B+W 65-066534 77mm Neutral Density 1.8-64x Filter #106 (6 stops)
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B + W 77mm #110 3.0 (1000x) Neutral Density Glass Filter (10 stops)I'd personally buy the 3 stop first, get a hang of what it does and, if you think you are into ND photos, purchase the 6 stop. Try that and watch the result combining both, and if you fall in love with ND photography, go for the 10 stop, as it requires a lot of preparation in anticipation of the shot: you need to focus before adding the filter, you need to manually calculate the exposure and you need bulb exposure and remote triggering to take the picture.
Hope this helps, best regards
Rafa.
ps. Thanks for your kind words.
... Its a great shot and yes, I agree its achieving mostly the same effect. If it has chance of being configured the size and position of the in-focus part, then its surely a lot less time consuming that what I did! 
/Canon Speedlite 430 EX II
