Do You Use Filters?

JBPhotog · Oct 30, 2018

Effects filters, rarely in my commercial work.

Clear "protective" filters, yes and no. I think of them like seat belts, if all I want to do is back my car out of the garage onto the driveway I don't buckle up, like in the studio no filter. But when shooting in environmental conditions that could cause an issue I use them, just like buckling up around other ahem, "drivers".

ac12 · Oct 30, 2018

smoke665 said:
Other then ND and CPL any one else with experience using both CPL and warming/cooling filters. After surgery, I've found the light outside really bright. On the suggestion of a friend I bought some of the "As seen on TV" amber tactical glasses. They took care of the brightness, but the biggest shocker was the difference in details in the shadows, I could now see. I'm wondering if a stacked CPL and warming filter would do the same to a digital sensor.

Was seeing more details in the shadows really a case of the lens color, or was your eye after surgery more light sensitive, so it could see better in the shade?

The eye is different than the sensor.
As I understand the eye sees more contrast with a yellow base. The black on yellow street signs are more readable to my eye, than the black on white signs. So a yellow tint lens will increase the contrast of the scene.

If you use a yellow tinted lens (amber and brown lenses have yellow), that filters the blue in the haze and shadows.
But, if you live in a smoggy city, the brown lens may/will see more of the smog, because the smog is not blue. My eye doc warned me about this when I got my brown lens sunglasses. Don't know how amber will do with smog.

smoke665 · Oct 30, 2018

ac12 said:
Was seeing more details in the shadows really a case of the lens color, or was your eye after surgery more light sensitive, so it could see better in the shade?

I think both. The cataracts (especially in my left eye) were worse then I realized. Like walking around with really dirty yellow windows. So now outside the colors are much more brilliant and the light really bright. The brown/amber/yellow lenses of the sunglasses take the edge off the light, kills the reflections, and as you say adds a little contrast. Really bright light outside takes on an slightly uncomfortable blue white, without the glasses, and with the glasses a warmer more comfortable appearance. I think I still have some filters from way back in the day, I guess I need to experiment with them. I'm not sure they'd be right for all occasions, but they might be interesting in special use circumstances.

zulu42 · Oct 30, 2018

@smoke665 I have actually seen a warming filter stacked with a CPL packaged together. Called Moose's Warming filter.
Heck, if you want to try a Tiffen warming filter I'll send you one - if you use round filters. I got a stack of oddball filters pretty cheap.

zulu42 · Oct 30, 2018

I'm so hip that I use filters for ear gauges. Usually colored filters to match my shades, orange, green, etc. but sometimes I will wear star filters if I'm feeling fancy.

smoke665 · Oct 30, 2018

zulu42 said:
I will wear star filters if I'm feeling fancy.

I've got some of those as well, always wondered what I could use them for now. LOL

TCampbell · Oct 31, 2018

Like most, I use:

CPL - to polarize the light -- avoiding reflections. This can't be fixed in Photoshop unless you're a really talented artist and fake-in the content.

ND - to reduce the light transmission without having to stop-down aperture or use a faster shutter speed. Any given shot has an array of possible exposures you can use to capture the shot. An ND filter "shifts" that array of exposures. For example... I've taken outdoor shots where I (a) wanted to use fill-flash, but (b) flash-sync speed was 1/200th sec, and (c) I didn't want to use high-speed sync because that will reduce the output of the flash, but (d) I wanted a wide aperture to have background blur. SO... I used a 3 stop ND which allowed me to keep my 1/200th sec shutter but also let me open the aperture by 3 stops. The exposure is roughly the same... but now I have the background blur I want. More commonly, ND filters are used to take longer exposures in order to create motion blur.

Grad NDs - commonly used to dim the sky brightness without impacting the foreground brightness.

You can apply graduated light adjustments in Lightroom as long as your image data wasn't clipped. If you have to pull up dark areas and your histogram starts to look like a comb... it is usually an indicator that you didn't really have enough data and are over-stretching it. A Grad ND helps you get enough data.

Most other things that previously required filters... can all be done in post processing to get a very similar result.

As for UV filters... in the era of film, if film was sensitive to UV, then you'd run into the issue where different wavelengths of light bend different amounts. Higher-energy wavelengths (such as UV) bend more than lower energy wavelengths (such as reds) and this means the light isn't focusing at the same distance. Even though you visually had best possible focus... your images are just slightly soft as a result of that UV light. So the easy solution is to just filter it out. BUT... that was in the era of film.

In a digital camera, there's a UV filter in front of the sensor. No need for extra UV filters. They functionally do not provide any positive value. There's a school of thought that it provides "protection" of the lens ... and another school of thought that the lens is better off on its own.

I (like so many others here) started using digital cameras with UV filters because UV filters were beneficial for film and ... old habits. But the downside is you have this shiny flat surface in front of your lens and it creates reflections and ghosting. I find that my images look better if I don't use a filter and the glass is pretty tough and not easily damaged. So I "own" UV filters... but I typically don't use them.