Filtering filters

The first thing budding amateur photographers did a while back, as did I, was to buy lots of filters that were used only once. Yes, there are so many special effect filters out there that are cool once, and then the coolness wears off. As most photographers will realize, there is only a handful of filters that are needed. This is further amplified by the digial era in which most special effect filters can easily be done in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

The only filters you do need are the following, a polarizer, some ND graduated filters and some pure ND filters. The polarizer is especially good for getting clear colors and a blue sky with well defined clouds. The greens in the foilage will jump at you if the sun is at 90 degrees angle to what you are shooting. Towards the sun or away from it, it wont do anything exept loose you a couple of stops. Yes, the polarizer blocks out a little over 2 stops so you might say it works like a 0.6 ND filter too. Except you might have to be carful so that you dont remove reflections you want in the picture. Overdoing the polarizer effect can also ruin some pictures.

The ND grads are very useful for balancing the exposure range of your image. As you might know the film, or digital sensor, can only record a certain range of light intensity. Thats why you curse and swear once you develop those pictures you took that looked awesome only to realize that the sky has been burned out or half the picture has turned black. Most amateurs seem to have a hard time getting past this, but when you do, your images will improve dramatically. How? Well, you start using graduated grey filters, or ND grads as they are called. Of course, shooting in a light range that the camera can record is also a good place to start. But sometimes you are faced with the most spectacular landscape with a low sun and details in the wet stones in front of you. Thats when you need a ND grad to make that bright sky and sun a couple of stops darker, 0.3 - 1 stop, 0.6 - 2 stops, 0.9 - 3 stops. Your images will improve drastically. Just look at the average Joe Cornish photo and you will see what I mean. Of course you still cant be sloppy about composition. Although, ND grads are nice, you can also easily do this effect digitally by combining two exposures that record each end of the light. This also requires you to have a tripod to frame exactly the same images, and in some cases you do not have this luxary, so ND grads should be in your backpack at all times.

Finally, a clean ND filter like the 0.9 can be very nice to have when you need to extend time in your exposures. This gray filter covers the whole image and a 0.9 filter will reduce the light with 3 stops, e.g. lowering your shutterspeed from 1/125 to 1/15. This is enough to make that water look foamy and nice, or lengthen that night shot even further.

So there it is, only 3 types of filters. Some of you might disagree. What about warmup filters, and filters for black and white? Well, I shoot digital so I can do all that in post processing later, and get exactly the results I want.