And this will cause your camera to either blow out the sky or underexpose the foreground unless you take certain steps to compensate. If you slide a GND filter in front of the lens, you can darken the sky while keeping the foreground well-exposed.
Hard graduated neutral density filters have a very rapid transition. They move from dark to light over a short distance, as shown in the photo below:. Whereas soft graduated neutral density filters transition from dark to light more slowly, like this:.
Hard GND filters are great for shooting scenes with flat horizons, such as a sunset over a snowy plain, or a sunrise over the ocean.
And soft GND filters are great for shooting scenes with more complex horizons, such as a sunrise over a mountain range or a sunset over a tree-filled field. You can actually achieve the same type of effect using high dynamic range imaging techniques.
This involves taking several images at different exposures, then blending them together during post-processing.
In most cases, assuming you have the post-processing know-how, these issues can be overcome. But it can take a lot of effort, not to mention time, which is why some photographers prefer to work with GND filters in the field. But filters vary wildly in quality, and most of the cheapest filters are, well, cheap. Their effects will be uneven. Polarizing filters are best for landscape photographers, architectural photographers, and cityscape photographers.
Neutral density filters are best for landscape photographers, architectural photographers, and portrait photographers who shoot in bright light. Graduated neutral density filters are best for landscape photographers and cityscape photographers. And clear filters are best for pretty much everyone, but especially those who are rough on their gear or shoot in tough environments.
That depends on the type of photography you do! Landscape and architecture photographers will appreciate polarizers, because they mitigate glare and deepen colors. Clear filters are great for pretty much anyone, and graduated neutral density filters are landscape only. In high-quality lens filters, that material is bonded to the glass layers to help keep out air and impurities.
Clear filters are used solely to protect lenses and are sometimes even referred to as protective filters. Like most lens filters, they can keep out dust, make cleaning easier, and offer some protection from impacts. For these reasons, many photographers use a clear filter on their lenses anytime they are not using another filter.
They also point out that any time you add a layer of glass in front of your lens, it will lower the image quality. And all of those complaints are true if you get the wrong filter. In addition, a high-quality filter can help keep your lens from getting scratched.
So if you are looking for a clear filter to give you some piece of mind about protecting your expensive lenses, here are a couple of great options. Both of these clear lens filters come from reputable manufacturers, have brass retention rings, and will not degrade your image quality. The reason for the difference in price is that Heliopan is a premium manufacturer they go the extra mile when it comes to quality.
They were necessary for film cameras because film is very sensitive to UV light. But digital sensors are less sensitive. However, UV filters can still remove UV haze in specific situations. For that reason, they are sometimes referred to as haze filters.
Digital cameras will only pick up this type of haze when ambient UV levels are very high. One example would be if you were shooting at a high elevation on a bright day and near large reflective surfaces like snow or a body of water. In that situation, if you tried shooting a distant subject, the UV light between the subject and your camera could result in haze in your image.
A UV filter would remove that haze. Similar to clear filters, some photographers use UV filters primarily to keep their lenses protected and clean. Check out this guide to learn more details about UV filters. What makes this filter a good option is it offers high light transmission with minimal distortion and reflections. The Best Cameras for Landscape Photography.
ND filters are made with dark-colored glass and are used to limit the amount of light entering your sensor without affecting the color of your image. They can help you avoid overexposing your images in bright light, especially when shooting with slower shutter speeds. A good ND filter will solve that problem. But these lens filters are not just used for landscapes. These filters vary in darkness. Like any filter, the amount of light they block is commonly measured in stops.
The higher the number of stops, the more the filter will darken the image. To help you make sense of it, there are ND filter beginner guides that include conversion charts.
Benro Master Series ND 3. GND filters are similar to ND filters except they transition vertically from dark to clear. They are used by landscape photographers for shooting scenes with lots of contrast, such as a bright sky with a dark foreground. To enable adjustments to suit the scene, most of these lens filters are made in a rectangular shape so you can move them up or down depending on how high the horizon is in your composition.
Round, screw-in filters are ideal if you only want to use the filter on one lens, or lenses with the same size thread, but if you have lenses with different thread sizes you'll need different filters for each one. With the square filter system you only need to buy one set of filters, as the filter holder that they sit in can have different adaptor rings fitted to accommodate for the different size of lens.
Which type you should choose also depends on the type of filters that you want to use, as some filters are only really useable screwed directly to the lens or in a square filter system.
Skylight filters, for example, are best suited to the round screw-in design, but filters such as neutral density grads are easiest to use in a square filter system.
A skylight or ultraviolet filter is mainly used to protect the front of your lens from potential damage, and prevent you getting dirt, dust or water on the harder to replace front element of the lens. All you need to do is keep the filter attached to your lens whenever you are using the camera. With film cameras, UV filters reduce haze and improve contrast by minimizing the amount of ultraviolet UV light that reaches the film. The problem with UV light is that it is not visible to the human eye, but is often uniformly distributed on a hazy day; UV therefore adversely affects the camera's exposure by reducing contrast.
Fortunately, digital camera sensors are nowhere near as sensitive to UV light as film, therefore UV filtration is no longer necessary.
However, UV filters have the potential to decrease image quality by increasing lens flare, adding a slight color tint or reducing contrast. High quality UV filters will not introduce any visible color cast. For digital cameras, it is often debated whether the advantage of a UV filter protection outweighs the potential reduction in image quality. For very expensive SLR lenses, the increased protection is often the determining factor, since it is much easier to replace a filter than to replace or repair a lens.
However, for less expensive SLR lenses or compact digital cameras protection is much less of a factor — the choice therefore becomes more a matter of personal preference. Another consideration is that UV filters may increase the resale value of the lens by keeping the front lens element in mint condition.
In that sense, a UV filter could also even be deemed to increase image quality relative to an unfiltered lens since it can be routinely replaced whenever it is perceived to adversely affect the image. Cooling or warming filters change the white balance of light reaching the camera's sensor. This can be used to either correct an unrealistic color cast, or to instead add one, such as adding warmth to a cloudy day to make it appear more like during sunset.
Above image's orange color cast is from the monochromatic sodium streetlamps; with this type of light source virtually no amount of white balance correction can restore full color. A cooling filter or special streetlight filter could be used to restore color based on other light sources. These filters have become much less important with digital cameras since most automatically adjust for white balance, and this can be adjusted afterwards when taking photos with the RAW file format. On the other hand, some situations may still necessitate color filters, such as situations with unusual lighting above example or underwater photography.
This is because there may be such an overwhelming amount of monochromatic light that no amount of white balance can restore full color—or at least not without introducing huge amounts of image noise in some color channels.
Filters should only be used when necessary because they can also adversely affect the image. Since they effectively introduce an additional piece of glass between your camera's sensor and the subject, they have the potential to reduce image quality. This usually comes in the form of either a slight color tint, a reduction in local or overall image contrast, or ghosting and increased lens flare caused by light inadvertently reflecting off the inside of the filter.
Filters may also introduce physical vignetting light fall-off or blackening at the edges of the image if their opaque edge gets in the way of light entering the lens right example. This was created by stacking a polarizing filter on top of a UV filter while also using a wide angle lens — causing the edges of the outermost filter to get in the way of the image.
Stacking filters therefore has the potential to make all of the above problems much worse. Lens filters generally come in two varieties: screw-on and front filters.
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