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Why You Need Lens Filters
Digital cameras and processing programs such as Adobe Photoshop have made capturing and processing digital images incredibly easy. What used to be nearly impossible is now possible with only a few mouse clicks and keyboard strokes. With the proliferation of digital cameras there are many more people now trying out their hand at photography.
But what a lot of the newer converts to photography don’t know is that there used to be these colored or tinted glass things that photographers would put over the front of their lenses to help them capture a specific type of image. These glass tinted things are called filters – and there are still a few filters a photographer must utilize in order to produce the best possible result for their landscape photography images.
Granted, digital processing of images has eliminated the need for most filters. Photographers don’t need red, green, orange, yellow and blue filters anymore in order to get great black and white images. Photoshop and Lightroom do a great job of converting photos from color to black and white and they allow great leeway in changing tones independently within the image.
However, with that said, there are still a couple of filters out there that are absolutely necessary in the quest for that perfect outdoor photography image. These are filters that cannot be replicated in Photoshop and affect the photographer’s ability to even capture a certain type of image in the first place. The two filters a photographer MUST have in their bag are the circular polarizer and the solid neutral density (ND) filter.
Circular Polarizer Filter
A circular polarizer is simply mandatory in outdoor photography as it has several essential functions. First of all it creates that great deep blue color in the sky seen as in so many landscape photos. By looking through the camera and rotating the filter you can actually see the sky turn to a deep shade of blue.
The second thing this filter does is control glare and reflections. Rotating the filter will allow you to take the glare off of wet rocks and leaves while saturating some colors. A polarizer will also eliminate or reduce glare on flat objects like windows allowing you to shoot through to subjects on the other side.xq
Neutral Density Filter
The neutral density filter is the other necessary filter for outdoor photography. The only function of the neutral density filter is to reduce the amount of light that reaches your camera’s sensor. It is up to you to add the creativity. Basically, anytime you want to reduce the amount of light entering your camera in order to allow much slower shutter speeds, it calls for a neutral density filter.
For example, if someone is shooting a waterfall but there is too much light to allow the slower shutter speeds that create that beautiful blur of water, an ND filter can help with that. A photographer should keep a 3-stop and a 10-stop in the bag at all times if he/she regularly shoots outdoor photography, particularly if he/she shoots landscape photography.
There is also a fantastic creation called a variable neutral density filter. This filter will look similar to a polarizer since part of the filter can rotate. By turning the outer edge of the filter the degree of density changes anywhere from 2 stops up to 8 stops with the rotation. This gadget is quite nifty, but can also be quite expensive.
Conclusion
So, the point today is that the use of filters is not completely dead and a photographer cannot simply rely on Photoshop for some photographic effects. The circular polarizer and circular solid neutral density filters are still very valuable tools in the photographer’s bag. There is some technique that one must know to use them, but it is well worth taking the time to learn.