A Few Questions About Filters and Tips for Capturing Vivid Colors

[NoFX]

I'm wondering about different filters and their relation/importance to capturing vivid colors, and also their use for different lighting types/situations. I'm looking to capture images true to what my eye sees when it comes to color, and it seems like they always come out "flat"-looking. The colors I'm looking at say, in the sky during sunset always look so much more vibrant and "pop" more than the image I take of the same scene, where they still may look good, but not GREAT, like how I'm seeing it with my eyes. Do filters help with this, or is it more about exposure and aperture settings?

Any tips on capturing rich colors in shots of sunsets/rises, tropical scenes like beach/jungle, New England leave changes in the fall, and other scenes generally filled with color, both in nature and man-made or staged.

I currently have a Nikon D5500 with a 18-140mm Lense and a Tamron 70-300mm lense with macro. I can't remember their f-stops off the top of my head and don't have em with me right now. Pretty sure they're both like 3.5-4.5 or 5.6, something like that. Both have UV filters on them, and that's all I have filter-wise right now. Are their any other "must have" filters I should pick up, even outside of the colors question, just generally speaking?

 

[table1349]

 

[snowbear]

The main on-the-lens filters that are really useful in the digital world are circular polarizing and neutral density filters. Most of the various color filters are intended for black & white photography to darken or lighten the grey produced by a certain color. A polarizer will darken blue skies but it doesn't do much else as far as color (though they can make everything a tiny bit blue). Neutral densities are supposed to have just that - neutral color cast.

Note that a "circular" polarizer refers to the alignment of the stuff that polarizes the light, not the shape of the filter.

 

[fjrabon]

The only things you need a filter for these days is:
1) polarization (will make your skies a little bit more blue, but mostly just reduces glare and gives that "polarized" crisp look)

2) cutting light: use when you want a slow shutter and wider aperture than the exposure would otherwise allow.

3) protecting your lens from scratches/smudges.

Everything else a filter does can more effectively be done in photoshop/lightroom/aperture/capture one, etc in today's deigital age

(unless you have a Leica monochrom, in which case color filters are a thing because you're pretentious enough to spend that much money on a black and white only digital camera)

 

[NoFX]

Thanks for the replies everyone! And I LOL'd at the pretentiousness of buying a black and white DSLR!

 

[snowbear]

Thanks for the replies everyone! And I LOL'd at the pretentiousness of buying a black and white DSLR!

Film is more fun.

 

[480sparky]

The only things you need a filter for these days is:
1) polarization (will make your skies a little bit more blue, but mostly just reduces glare and gives that "polarized" crisp look)
.........

True,............ if you're shooting color. If you're shooting in b&w (yes, even digital!), then using color filters does make a difference.

 

[fjrabon]

The only things you need a filter for these days is:
1) polarization (will make your skies a little bit more blue, but mostly just reduces glare and gives that "polarized" crisp look)
.........

True,............ if you're shooting color. If you're shooting in b&w (yes, even digital!), then using color filters does make a difference.

Most B&W conversion programs can do everything a color filter does, as long as you took the original photo in color and then converted to B&W in post

 

[480sparky]

Most B&W conversion programs can do everything a color filter does, as long as you took the original photo in color and then converted to B&W in post

So let's test that. Shot in raw, straight-up b&w conversion.... no adjustments done: ("Control image"):

Suppose I want a nice, dark sky when shooting b&w. I have several options available to me. I can:

1. Shoot in raw, post conversion with digital red filter (0°, 100% saturation):

2. Shoot in jpeg, using circular polarizor, camera set to monochrome:

3. Shoot in jpeg, using camera's internal 'red filter', camera set to monochrome:

4. Now, if I truly want a dark sky, I would use a good, old-fashioned glass filter. In this case, a 25A: (shot in jpeg, camera set to monochrome)

The only post-processing done to any of these is converting the raw to monochrome, the addition of a red filter slider for one image, resizing then saving as a renamed jpeg.


I'll take Red Filter 25A for $1000, Alex.

 

[fjrabon]

Most B&W conversion programs can do everything a color filter does, as long as you took the original photo in color and then converted to B&W in post

So let's test that. Shot in raw, straight-up b&w conversion.... no adjustments done: ("Control image"):

Suppose I want a nice, dark sky when shooting b&w. I have several options available to me. I can:

1. Shoot in raw, post conversion with digital red filter (0°, 100% saturation):

2. Shoot in jpeg, using circular polarizor, camera set to monochrome:

3. Shoot in jpeg, using camera's internal 'red filter', camera set to monochrome:

4. Now, if I truly want a dark sky, I would use a good, old-fashioned glass filter. In this case, a 25A: (shot in jpeg, camera set to monochrome)

The only post-processing done to any of these is converting the raw to monochrome, the addition of a red filter slider for one image, resizing then saving as a renamed jpeg.


I'll take Red Filter 25A for $1000, Alex.

You can also set a channel specific blue curve. You can literally make every single blue pixel black if you wanted to.

More extreme yet, you can set a darkening blue curve combined with a brightening red curve and make it truly extreme.

 

[480sparky]

Seems a lot easier to use a filter. But that's just me.

 

[fjrabon]

Seems a lot easier to use a filter. But that's just me.

This took me 5 seconds, and this is probably way more extreme that you'd ever want. Literally faster than you can screw on a filter, not even considering that you would have to buy different filters, keep up with them, consider which you want, no granular control, etc:

here's a third more subtle, from the same original JPEG (some banding bc these were all shot in JPEG bc I never intended on BW conversion, that issue would go away with RAW:

Plus digital allows you to decide, after the fact, that you'd rather have had a slightly more agressive red, or a slightly less aggressive red, and it allows you to not miss the shot of the bird flying by because you had to unscrew your red filter.

Also, this was in response to asking if a filter was needed. Sure, filters can be fun, and if they're easier for you, then great, I own some red filters and they're fun to play around with, but they're certainly not needed in a digital world.

 

[480sparky]

If you're assuming everyone wants to do nothing but spend time editing, have at it. I don't. I'd rather be out shooting. I get far more pleasure being out with a camera than sitting in front of a monitor, even if it does 'take longer than 5 seconds to screw on a filter'.



Oh, I don't have to take that long. I have Zume adapters. Filters on take ONE second to put on.

 

[Derrel]

If you want better, richer color, using a proper lens hood can often help to reduce internal reflections of glare, which can be subtle, but still cause weaker color. Many low-cost lenses give just average color richness; some of the "new Nikkor" family of G-series lenses have richer color than older lenses. A good number of very high-priced lenses which use ED glass, and nowadays, nano-crystal lens coating,produce what is called "rich color". Literally, the color properties are found in the lens...a lens that has superb internal baffling, state of the art coating, and superb glass can produce BETTER images, on the same,exact camera. A great example: the Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 from the 1980's versus a 300/2.8 AFS-Mark II, a mid-2000's era lens, the 300/2./8 has much better color and contrast and is just a far,far better optic... or say the 70-150 Series E Nikon of the late 1970's...NOT very rich color on the old E (the Economy series), but a nice, sharp lens...but compared against the newer 70-200 VR lenses that are 30 years newer in design and ten to fifteen times more expensive...the difference is there.

On things like sunrises and sunsets, bright beach scenes, and so on...this is where a proper lens hood, a clean front and rear element, and a TOP-quality lens will give the best possible color. A lot of the multi-multi element slow zooms that retail for under $400 are really second-tier lenses, perhaps third-tier if we consider the good lenses, and then the superlative lenses at the top. A number of the intermediately-priced Nikkor G-series lenses produce really RICH, vivid, highly-saturated color--better than earlier lenses in terms of microcontrast, as well as color saturation, with a lot of POP! to the images.

 

[fjrabon]

If you're assuming everyone wants to do nothing but spend time editing, have at it. I don't. I'd rather be out shooting. I get far more pleasure being out with a camera than sitting in front of a monitor, even if it does 'take longer than 5 seconds to screw on a filter'.



Oh, I don't have to take that long. I have Zume adapters. Filters on take ONE second to put on.

I never assumed that. I simply said you can do anything a red filter does in post. In fact, I said that if you prefer using filters then by all means have at it.

Heck, if you'd prefer to use filters to correct white balance, like they did in the old days, be my guest. Nothing wrong with it.

My point was and is that color filters arent ****needed**** that you can do everything they can do and more and with finer control in post with digital. And as far as "sitting in front of a computer instead of shooting" red filter BW conversions take seconds. And you can do them in batch too, if you so desire.