Obviously it was a thing for film cameras, but now that everything is digital, something like “just make the picture darker” seems extremely easy to do with software
quick edit, I know what ND filters are for and how to use them, no need to explain. it just seems to me that it could be engineered in a way that doesn’t require them, which is what I’m asking about
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You can make a photo darker in software, but software can’t change the exposure time. If you want to do something like capture the movement of water in a waterfall in broad daylight you need a relatively slow shutter speed to capture the motion of water. This would be something like 1/15s or so. You might not be able to achieve correct exposure at that shutter speed in daylight even at the narrowest aperture and lowest sensor sensitivity, so you need an external way of reducing light at the time of capture.
New sensor technology is on the horizon which will dramatically change this. Not only can photosites (think pixels) be configured have dynamic sensitivity within a single frame, they will be able to have different exposure times too!
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