Lens Filters....Which ones or dont bother? (1 Viewer)

Oct 20, 2014
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Hi guys, Wondering should I get a set of filters for my DSLR....as the title says, what do you recommend or do they take away from picture quality and therefore not worth the hassle?....cheers
 
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Irishrover
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Yes they can degrade a little, especially in direct light, unless you buy very good quality one. I always use Hoya Pro and they are great
Thanks for the link Jim...I havent a clue which are good/bad etc....will order a set....cheers

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Allanm

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Never use them. One of my lenses has a "Nano " coating. Whatever that is, but I assume it is there to stop reflections and encourage more light to enter the lens.
Seems a backward step to fit a filter on the front, you lose all the benefit of the special coating.
But, after many years of camera ownership and never using filters ( except for special effects) I found a scratch on the front element of one of my new lenses this week!
Bu**er!
I thought about fitting a uv filter on it, but, to be honest, the damage is done now and it doesn't affect the images. Still annoying though.....
 
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Thanks for the link Jim...I havent a clue which are good/bad etc....will order a set....cheers

Hoya are good. Don't buy the very cheapest ones. For a basic UV filter look to spend £10-£15 as a minimum

I've got them on all my lenses just to protect them. I dropped a lens face down on a tile floor once. £10 UV filter smashed, £850 lens was fine. That's reason enough for me.

There are plenty of types but apart from two of them you can recreate the effects they give afterwards if you need to. Those ones are the circular polariser and neutral density. You don't need either of these unless you are specifically trying to achieve the effects they give. They are both ways of limiting the amount of light entering the lens useful mainly in landscape/outdoor photography.
 
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Irishrover
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Thanks @Allanm and @NickNic......For good or bad, I've ordered some Hoya jobbies.....Will give them a try and see how they are, If anything....they should protect my lens as you all have mentioned...thanks again guys(y)

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Thanks @Allanm and @NickNic......For good or bad, I've ordered some Hoya jobbies.....Will give them a try and see how they are, If anything....they should protect my lens as you all have mentioned...thanks again guys(y)

If you want to play with the others then you can get a cheap full ND kit from Broken Link Removed for next to nothing. They aren't great and you won't get fine art results but they are fine to play with and get the hang of what they do without spending a couple of hundred quid on a real set.

There are some circular polarisers in Jim's link. It's not worth spending any less on them so stick with Hoya again.
 

DBK

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I'm glad the OP asked the question because it led me to the discovery that for a modern DSLR they are no longer necessary from a photographic point of view as the sensors have a UV filter built in!

So they are really just a dust cover now. :)

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7333331953/should-you-use-a-uv-filter-on-your-lens

But I have ordered an ND filter recently so I can take some cliché shots of moving water. :D
 
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So they are really just a dust cover now. :)

Yep, mechanical protection only. Of course it's far better to scratch or smash a filter than a lens so they're still worth having (y)

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magicsurfbus

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It's amazing how many people out there have high end Canon and Nikon lenses fitted with cheapo Jessops filters. As others have already said, protect the lens with a good quality UV filter.

A variable neutral density filter is fun for a bit of experimentation with very long exposures (ie making mountain waterfalls look like smoke). If you shoot in RAW format you get a great deal of control over the image which tends to make filters redundant.

As I buy in job lots of old camera kit I now have a large pile of the old Cokin 'creative' filters. As soon as I can find a filter holder wide enough I might have a laugh with some retro 1970s style DSLR photography, but much of it can be achieved in software these days.

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As so many of us spend time in sunny places I recommend a polarising filter...blue skies, fluffy white clouds and white buildings, unwanted reflections and shadows, all dramatically improved.
 

Clive

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I have what's left of a Cokin pro kit. The only ones I still use are the ND's, be they full, hard edge or graduated. Have always used UV to protect the lens and have always found this best with a lens hood to protect from side light hitting it (y)

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gomotorhome

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I also use a UV filter for 90% of the time (just as a lens protector, they don't do anything else on a DLSR) but PLEASE take it off for your really important photos.
Manufacturers go to immense trouble to create that front element. Screwing a flat piece of glass in front of it always degrades the image (reflections, refractions, reduced light..etc).
The most you can hope for is that you can't spot the degradation.
Ask yourself "What would a Pro do?" (Answer..they wouldn't use a UV filter)

As for filters that do something creative:

1 - Variable Neutral Density. (Variable because they are so useful for making good quality video).
2 - Polariser.
3 - Photoshop (The best filter ever made).
4 - Lens Hoods for all your lenses(Ebay sell perfectly good copies for a fiver)

Then, if you aren't shooting RAW files,....start shooting RAW files because, if you don't, you are discarding the "Wow factor".
 

Nethernut

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Agree with gomotorhome - as the wife of a professional photographer (ended up running photography in the Army) I would say learn how to use your camera in manual mode without any filters etc, keep a record of the settings you use to get used to the difference that different apertures and speeds make, and different ISO settings. Once you really understand your camera you will then know what you will need - nowadays nowt apart from Photoshop!!!!
 

gomotorhome

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Thanks for the support Nethernut :)

However....As a big user of Photoshop (Every image you see of mine will be "Photoshopped"), it can't fix everything. Far better to get it right in-camera and tweak it 1% in Photoshop than try to tweak an image 50%.

What I left off my list above was a "Graduated ND" filter. Probably the most essential filter for Landscape images.

The most common problem for cameras, even the £3000 ones, is capturing a good exposure of the scene AND a good exposure of the sky.
Yes, you can use Photoshop to create a "virtual" graduated filter BUT, if the sky is washed out then it's washed out and there's nothing Photoshop can do about it (Well, there is but it wouldn't be the same sky from your photograph).

Far better to put a "Grad" on so you give your camera the chance to capture detail in the sky.

It takes people a while to learn that the human eye is an amazing device and cameras can't compete with it yet*

*That's what Photoshop is for, not to "cheat" but to try and recreate what your eye/brain saw, not what your (rather limited) camera managed to see.

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GIMP is a good free alternative to Photoshop, may not have all the bells and whistles but good enough for most folk.
 

gomotorhome

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Yes, GIMP is excellent. Combine it with a RAW image processor such as RawTherapee (also free) and you have most everything you need.

I just happen to have Photoshop and I use about 5% of it's capability. GIMP has that 5% and more.

RAW image processing is where the important stuff is done though. I use "Camera RAW".

If you don't know about RAW then I can highly recommend checking out Youtube videos on its benefits, especially if you shoot landscapes.

No Pro Landscape photographer shoots in JPEG.. with good reason. (In fact I doubt any Pro photographer of any kind shoots in JPEG except for backups).

That's my filters tip.. before you think about filters make sure you take photos in RAW format.

I think most cameras with RAW capability allow you to shoot a JPEG backup as well so you don't lose anything by trying.

BUT..you need to accept that EVERY image shot in RAW will need post-processing to make it "sing". It's more than worth it for your best images though.
 

Mack100

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It's all about light:)
Understand exposure and understand your equipment. I'm still learning every day after 50 years of photography and still making mistakes!

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BreweryDave

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Here's a tip - hold a pair of sunglasses over the lens. Very amateur I know, but with polarised glasses and one lens held over a phone or iPad camera you do get some good effects, simple and free!
 

gomotorhome

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It's all about light:)
Understand exposure and understand your equipment. I'm still learning every day after 50 years of photography and still making mistakes!
They do say that if you don't make mistakes then you don't make anything. That's certainly true about photography (and some of my favourite images were "mistakes", in that it was by messing around that I achieved something better than doing it by the book)
 
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No Pro Landscape photographer shoots in JPEG.. with good reason. (In fact I doubt any Pro photographer of any kind shoots in JPEG except for backups).

Pro and serious sports photographers shoot in JPEG because of the sheer volume of images they're outputting. Shooting a rugby or a football match I will easily take 500 shots of which usually around half are good enough for the website they usually end up on. I simply do not have the time to process that many images. Also you are not looking for fine art output with this type of photography so RAW is just not necessary. The only time I even think about RAW is for a studio or completely staged shoot where there won't be many images and the final output needs to be printed to fine art quality. I wouldn't recommend it ever for a beginner.

A friend of mine has been a pro for 30 years and currently works for our local paper. She has never shot a RAW image in her life. She always says that the deadlines she is normally given leave her no time to do any kind of post processing whatsoever even if she wanted to. Again newspaper paper and print resolution means doing anything much to an image is a waste of time because it won't reproduce anyway.

I find most people, when they do shoot in RAW and spend ages playing with the image, don't know what to do with it afterwards anyway. It always makes me smile when they don't understand colour profiles and don't even know the correct format to save such an image. I get sent pictures for print all the time where the person proudly tells me all about how they shot it in RAW and have spent hours on it. I never like to tell them that because they've sent me a crappy medium or even sometimes low res JPG in the wrong profile they've completely wasted their time.

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gomotorhome

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Pro and serious sports photographers shoot in JPEG because of the sheer volume of images they're outputting. Shooting a rugby or a football match I will easily take 500 shots of which usually around half are good enough for the website they usually end up on. I simply do not have the time to process that many images. Also you are not looking for fine art output with this type of photography so RAW is just not necessary. The only time I even think about RAW is for a studio or completely staged shoot where there won't be many images and the final output needs to be printed to fine art quality. I wouldn't recommend it ever for a beginner.

A friend of mine has been a pro for 30 years and currently works for our local paper. She has never shot a RAW image in her life. She always says that the deadlines she is normally given leave her no time to do any kind of post processing whatsoever even if she wanted to. Again newspaper paper and print resolution means doing anything much to an image is a waste of time because it won't reproduce anyway.

I find most people, when they do shoot in RAW and spend ages playing with the image, don't know what to do with it afterwards anyway. It always makes me smile when they don't understand colour profiles and don't even know the correct format to save such an image. I get sent pictures for print all the time where the person proudly tells me all about how they shot it in RAW and have spent hours on it. I never like to tell them that because they've sent me a crappy medium or even sometimes low res JPG in the wrong profile they've completely wasted their time.
You make good points. I forgot about "deadline" photography.
Jpegs do meet deadlines, transmit quickly and are ubiquitous as far as software goes. I have no experience in news/journo photography, I'm just an enthusiastic amateur.
If an editor told me I needed to get them a knockout punch, from a boxing match, within 15 minutes of the punch then yes, I'd be rattling off Jpegs at 10FPS via a Wifi Card.

In my defence however, this is a photography tips thread and most threads like this are read by "Hobbyists" learning about getting the best from their camera on holiday or at the weekend.
It's no good NOT telling people about RAW, it's up to the individual to do some research and see if it's what they want.

RAW, if you have the time (it DOES consume your time), does get the most out of your image. Since 32GB of memory is £9 it's practical to store RAW + jpeg just so you can work on an individual RAW file, of that special image, that comes along every so often ("deadline" photography aside as that option usually slows a camera down).

It still pains me to see some of my images from my "pre-RAW days", knowing what's been lost in the shadows, highlights and tone, that I can never recover.

In that respect, even before I knew about RAW, I wish someone had told me about it and mentioned there was a RAW+jpeg option. I'd be able to go back to them now and play.
 
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You make good points. I forgot about "deadline" photography.
Jpegs do meet deadlines, transmit quickly and are ubiquitous as far as software goes. I have no experience in news/journo photography, I'm just an enthusiastic amateur.
If an editor told me I needed to get them a knockout punch, from a boxing match, within 15 minutes of the punch then yes, I'd be rattling off Jpegs at 10FPS via a Wifi Card.

In my defence however, this is a photography tips thread and most threads like this are read by "Hobbyists" learning about getting the best from their camera on holiday or at the weekend.
It's no good NOT telling people about RAW, it's up to the individual to do some research and see if it's what they want.

RAW, if you have the time (it DOES consume your time), does get the most out of your image. Since 32GB of memory is £9 it's practical to store RAW + jpeg just so you can work on an individual RAW file, of that special image, that comes along every so often ("deadline" photography aside as that option usually slows a camera down).

It still pains me to see some of my images from my "pre-RAW days", knowing what's been lost in the shadows, highlights and tone, that I can never recover.

In that respect, even before I knew about RAW, I wish someone had told me about it and mentioned there was a RAW+jpeg option. I'd be able to go back to them now and play.


15 minutes? That's old news these days. Watch the guys at a football or rugby match, or any other sporting event, if you ever get the chance. Essential kit for them as well as the camera is a Macbook with a card reader taped to the screen (more reliable than the on board one) and a mobile phone to create a hotspot if there is no wifi in the stadium. When there's a goal or a wicket or whatever the card is out of the camera, into the reader and the image is with their picture editor within a minute or two. Wifi cards are a waste of time because the transfer rate is too slow.

Like I said I rarely bother with RAW. I did try the RAW + JPG option once at a rugby game because I have two card slots in my cameras so I started with one card for RAW and the other for the jpegs. The RAW card was full within 10 minutes so at that point the idea got abandoned as I can't be faffed with carrying multiple cards and changing them every few minutes.

The only serious people I know who use it are ones who work mostly in a studio or with models. Keen amateurs aside, nobody else has the time or the interest.

I've got to say I hate post processing with a passion. The most I ever do with my own work is occasionally tweak the levels a bit. Spending hours photoshopping is cheating to me, I'd rather get the image right in camera. I spend most of my working day staring at either Photoshop or Illustrator so doing the same thing when I don't have to doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Being happy to take a mediocre picture because you've learnt how to put it right on a computer afterwards isn't photography to me. Don't get me wrong, I can do it and people pay me to do it, but it isn't something I'd ever accept for my own work.

With regard to beginners my advice is always the same three things:

Put it in full manual mode and never ever change it.
Put a 50mm prime on it.
Forget all about any other lenses, filters, software or anything else until you can use the camera properly in that configuration. Until you understand how to use the camera properly and start producing acceptable images you don't need to be messing around with anything else.
 

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