Information on using Filters

Nozebleed

Hi. anyone have a useful link for lens filters? I would like a filter for moody B/W shots! I have a canon 500d. also if you can recommend a ~UV filter that would be great.

.Longshanks.

Try the 7dayshop.com for cheap ones.... The size of your lens is the important thing and not the camera its attached to

angeleyes

The best filters you can get if money wasn't an object are Lee filters

http://www.leefilters.com/camera/products/range/ref:I46CBFACFBD385/

I think there is an eight week wait for them from warehouse express.

I did get filters which were cheap and cheerful from 7dayshop they they do tend to give you a magenta cast on images.

Thecageyone

I got some cheap ND filters on ebay recently, and they do leave a colour cast - easily cleaned up in PP, but I'd rather not have to. If you plan on using filters a lot, go with quality makes as suggested. The glass will be of a much higher grade and they won't put a layer of unwanted colouring across your images.

veryrandom

This is gonna sound terrible, but i havn't had much exposure to filters, what do or can they do?

Thecageyone

I've only used ND [neutral density] Filters. If you want to do some long exposure shooting during the day, up to a couple of seconds, these filters stop down the exposure to allow you to do it. Otherwise you get whiteout shots.

An example, you want to capture flowing water nice and smoothly. You need to expose for a 1/4sec or longer, You'll never do it without an ND filter.

CabanSail

The most common filters are UV, CPL, ND & ND Grad.

The UV is to filter out Ultraviolet light, which is done by an internal filter in front of the sensor anyway, but do have an effect on film cameras. They are really now a sacrificial element to save the lens. I have had one give it's life in that role and was thankful for it. Some may argue they reduce quality very slightly.

CPL - Circular Polarising Filter. These are very useful to reduce reflections and can increase contrast in the sky and colour saturation. You do lose a stop or two through them. Some of the effects of a CPL cannot be reproduced in PP.

ND - Neutral Density. These reduce the amount of light by a fixed amount. They come in ratings of ND2, ND4, ND8 etc. In the label NDn the 'n' is the inverse of the light reduction so they will be 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 respectively .... also 1, 2, 3 Stops. These are useful for Long Expousres or to allow shallow DoF.

ND Grad are the same as above but only cover part of the frame. There is a transition between the ND & Clear part which varies on different models too. These are mainly used on Landscapes to bring the Dynamic Range of the Sky & Land/Sea closer together. It's analogue HDR.

Most of the other effects filters can be applied in PP these days. For B&W you can use red or orange filters to darken the sky but that is available easily and adjustable in PP.

Balfey1972

There is a good review of ND filters in the October issue of PhotoPlus. They confirm Lee filters are super but as a much cheaper alternative and with a 94% rate there is Kood Pro Series. www.kood-international.com.

Going to get some of these myself and give them a try.

angeleyes wrote: »

The best filters you can get if money wasn't an object are Lee filters
http://www.leefilters.com/camera/products/range/ref:I46CBFACFBD385/

I think there is an eight week wait for them from warehouse express.

I did get filters which were cheap and cheerful from 7dayshop they they do tend to give you a magenta cast on images.

peckerhead

German-made B&W filters are good as well. I recently picked up a 58mm CPL for about £16 delivered from an eBay seller, which was about the same price as a very ordinary Hoya equivalent from Amazon.co.uk.

If I'd a 500D I'd put a decent quality filter on the front, especially the UV, as it's going to be there more or less permanently.

sineadw

My ND filters cost under 20 quid for the set (82mm) if I remember correctly (2, 4 and 8) and have never left a colour cast And are great fun for long exposures and time lapse stuff.

I use my circ pol a lot for film, when I know I'm gonna just scan the neg with no post processing and there's a bit of sun. It's a hoya one. Other than that, I only use a cheapass UV one for protection. Always. Unless I'm shooting infrared when its a hoya R72 or similar.

Heebie

There are a lot of different kinds of filters that do all kinds of crazy things.

A filter is a piece of glass that sits in front (or sometimes behind) the lens, and selectively blocks some frequencies of light, or sometimes selectively alters the path the light takes through the lens.

The most common filter is probably a polarizing filter.. which is literally the same thing as you putting a good pair of polarized sunglasses in front of your face. (except that a good polarizing filter doesn't have a particular color cast..and isn't nearly as dark.)

Black & white photography often uses yellow and magenta filters (as does black & white darkroom printing) Yellow filters decrease the contrast of an image by reducing how much blue light gets through to the film, and magenta filters increase the contrast by reducing how much green light gets through to the film. (Yellow and magenta are the opposites of blue and green.)

An example of a filter that selectively alters the path of light through a camera would be a "starlight" filter. With a starlight filter, the brighter a spot of light going through the filter is, the more it scatters that light.. so you get a "star" pattern around any brightly lit spots in the image (sometimes called "specular highlights")

There are a lot of other types as well. The ones being talked about in this thread are neutral-density (ND) filters. Good ND filters don't change the quality of the light going through.. they just reduce how much light gets through, generally by a very specific amount measured in stops (so a 1-stop ND filter should add 1-stop to the necessary exposure time to take a photo.) This allows using longer exposures without increasing your depth-of-field by tightening down your f-stop. Very useful in bright sun.

veryrandom wrote: »

This is gonna sound terrible, but i havn't had much exposure to filters, what do or can they do?

dinneenp

I just bought a 17-50mm f2.8 lens.
So am going to buy a UV filter to protect it. (people have said it's worth having to prevent any possible scratch on the actual lens. Anyone disagree?)
7dayshop have hama 67mm UV for £6.99, down from £10.39.
Would this be grand or should I buy a better one? All I'll be using it for is to protect the lens so as long as it does that and doesn't effect picture quality I'm happy.
What exaclty is the differnence- the quality of the glass I presume in more expensive ones I presume?
Cheers,
pa.

leche solara

dinneenp wrote: »

I just bought a 17-50mm f2.8 lens.
So am going to buy a UV filter to protect it. (people have said it's worth having to prevent any possible scratch on the actual lens. Anyone disagree?)
7dayshop have hama 67mm UV for £6.99, down from £10.39.
Would this be grand or should I buy a better one? All I'll be using it for is to protect the lens so as long as it does that and doesn't effect picture quality I'm happy.
What exaclty is the differnence- the quality of the glass I presume in more expensive ones I presume?
Cheers,
pa.

That one should suit your needs just fine.

Ballyman

dinneenp wrote: »

I just bought a 17-50mm f2.8 lens.
So am going to buy a UV filter to protect it. (people have said it's worth having to prevent any possible scratch on the actual lens. Anyone disagree?)
7dayshop have hama 67mm UV for £6.99, down from £10.39.
Would this be grand or should I buy a better one? All I'll be using it for is to protect the lens so as long as it does that and doesn't effect picture quality I'm happy.
What exaclty is the differnence- the quality of the glass I presume in more expensive ones I presume?
Cheers,
pa.

You spend hundreds of euro on a lens and then put a 6.99 job on the front of it????
The front glass of a lens is as hard as a brick. You can watch idiots on youtube trying to break the glass on a 50mm with a hammer and failing. If you still think you are going to break the glass then get a lens hood but putting a 6.99 piece of crap onto the front of an expensive lens is just silly.