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Post by viewsthroughmylens Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:59 am

I see this topic has been discussed before, and after reading through it I'm still kind of confused! lol. I've been looking into getting some different filters (to work with a Nikon D50) and I'm not sure what would be my best investment. I shot some portraits but mostly landscapes. I don't want to spend lots of money, but at the same time I don't want to waste money on something that I'm going to 'out grow'. Thoughts?
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Post by Kenneth Armstrong Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:47 pm

In the film days you used to buy different filters for different effects, but mostly digital does away with all that. You would buy a red, green, yellow, blue, pink, etc filters for B&W photography or to change colour casts with colour film (shooting daylight film under fluorescent lights, for example, would result in a green image so you would put on a coloured filter to offset that). There are fog filters, starlight filters etc etc but again most of that you can do in photoshop so I will focus on filters you may want to consider.

UV Filter: Basic protective filter, really just a clear piece of glass with a UV treatment on it. Very useful as a protector for your lens, I have dropped a lens which broke the filter but probably would have broken the front element had it not been screwed on there. To play devil's advocate some people don't put filters over expensive lenses because they feel it's a cheap piece of glass over their expensive lens and degrades the image quality.

Circular polarizer: These look like sunglasses and you lose about a stop (so, as an example, if you were shooting 1/500th of a second without the filter you would have to shoot 1/250th with it on or change your aperture accordingly). This will bring out the blue in the skies and cuts reflection off of water or glass. In this shot, for example, the filter cut the harsh reflection off the dark water. Very useful when you need it but you don't want it on all the time.

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ND Filter: A neutral-density filter which darkens a picture to differing degrees. These allow you to use lower shutter speeds or larger apertures. The first thing I think of when I think ND filters is those long exposure shots of waterfalls where the water looks like silk. Really not very useful in everyday photography.

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Post by Nando Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:11 pm

If it was practical, I wouldn't use any filters. Engineers spend enormous efforts to optimize a lens to be just so and then the photographer puts another (often cheap - as in crappy) piece of glass in front of it. That being said, I'm too scared to risk damage to the glass of any of my lenses so I use a good UV filter on each. I use them mainly for protection and not for their effect.

I go out of my way to get B+W filters with the MRC coatings - in my opinion, the best filters out there. The MRC coating is extremely scratch resistance so I don't have to worry when I clean them. They are available with brass rings instead of aluminium and the glass is the best you can ask for in a filter.

I also use yellow filters for my older lenses when shooting black and white to increase the contrast a bit. Also darkens a blue sky a bit but not to the point where its too dark. In the case of my 1946 50mm Summitar, new UV filters for protection are impossible to get because the lens has a non-standard thread. So an original yellow filter does double duty in increasing the contrast and offering some protection. They're not needed with any of my newer lenses - some of my newer lenses actually produce results that are too contrasty for my taste.

I have an ND filters for my 85mm f1.5 Helios because I intended to use the lens wide-open in daylight. Unfortunately, due to massive weight of this lens, it sits mostly on the shelf. I didn't bother getting any ND filters for my super-fast 35mm f/1.2 Nokton as I regulate that lens mainly for low-light situations. During the day, I use my much smaller 35mm f/2 Summicron.

Polarizers can be useful for SLR's but aren't too practical for the rangefinder cameras I use.
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