At midday on a sunny day, by the sunny-16 rule you can expect to set the camera exposure to f/16 1/100 s at ISO 100. To get to even 1/50 s, you're now at f/22,

At midday on a sunny day, by the sunny-16 rule you can expect to set the camera exposure to f/16 1/100 s at ISO 100. To get to even 1/50 s, you're now at f/22, the limit of most commercial lenses. So yes, ND filters are still useful to those of us who understand manual exposure.