Hard or Soft, help please!

[Scoobydougie]

Well my other half has very kindly agreed to buying me a set of Lee ND filters for my Xmas!

However as things never seem as simple as you think I now have the option of hard or soft, can someone please explain to a complete newbie when it comes to filters which I should be looking at.

Thanks in advance.

[RobDickinson]

I'd go soft personaly.

I think you use soft with wider lenses more and hard with more tele shots that have more defined horizons?

[S. Gonzales Esq.]

All IMHO, but if you can only have one, go Hard every time. I've only ever used my soft grad once in ten years, and that was to correct light fall-off across a room - the effect is too subtle to be much use anywhere else. If you're using an ND grad in the field you'll probably want to have it act on a defined part of the scene (above the horizon, for example) and the soft transition just won't do this. Get a .6 Hard first, then a .9 and see how you get on.