Filters

It is my personal belief that photo developing centers are in direct cahoots with bacteriologists. All down the rows of rooms, you can hear the sad moans and angry wails of people confronted with their own pictures. I went directly to the photo booth, where the assistant, Sandy, insisted that we needed help, a whole new approach. As with all new image renovations, this one was to begin with cameras.

I told Sandy that my camera was perfectly fine, but something's wrong with the pictures. "That's because you're not using a Sony filter," said the girl showing me a box of petri dishes. "This is the Sony VF-58CPKS. It will help protect your lenses against scratches, bacteria, dusts, grimes, and thumb marks. This will protect your lenses against damage, so you'll get pleasing image quality. Furthermore, it keeps away water and unwanted reflections on your lens," she added.

Sandy, who had perused my pictures to check the damage suggested that I should buy their Sony filters. "It's a good investment," she said. Did that mean that after five years the filters would become more valuable, and that one day I could pawn them in and retire? It did not. It meant that they were expensive--- they cost $86. I considered buying the filters and a new camera. Instead, I went down the street to a medical laboratory store and bought a box of petri dishes.

Didymium Glass Filters are usually sold as "color enhancers" or "color intensifiers." They seek to highlight certain colors without upsetting overall white balance. For example, red intensifiers are used to punch up the reds in photographs of fall foliage, red rock country and sunsets. Althought the actual effect may vary from film to film, it can be estimated by viewing the scene through the filter. The estimate of the amount of color cast that any neutral or light shades will pick up in the finished image is given by the magenta color of the filter itself.

Didymium may sound like a chemical compound to an ordinary Joe, but the actually it's just a mixture of two rare earths—praseodymium and neodymium. This type of filters are produced in very thin glass sections with a thickness of between one and two millimeters, because the amount of light absorbed by the filter is dependent upon filter thickness. Artifacts such as colored backgrounds and degradation of other stain colors are introduced by using thicker didymium filters. With these elements, the glass acquires a very spiky absorption spectrum chemically tunable between near UV and near IR wavelengths. Technically, nothing is being "intensified" here. The target color is just increased in apparent saturation by surgically attenuating adjacent bands, hopefully without upsetting the overall color balance too badly.

A neutral density or ND filter is what they call in photography and optics as “gray” filter. The primary purpose of ND filters is to reduce the amount of light that can pass through the lens. It gives photographers a wider flexibility to change the aperture or exposure time especially in extreme situations, thus giving more control. It is also helpful if you want to use a slower shutter speed or use a larger aperture.

If you want to take a picture of a falls on a very bright day, you would want to use a slow shutter speed in order to get a dramatic effect with a deliberate motion blur. You'll need a shutter speed on the order of a tenths of a second. You can use a neutral density filter to slow down the shutter speed and achieve that desired effect.

The B+W Neutral Density Filter from Kodak is an example of good performing ND filter. It is made of high-quality optical glass which is in a neutral gray color. In effect, when you use this type of filter you'll be able to produce an image where the hues or relative colors in the scene does not change.

Technology means change and change is inevitable. Just look at how the entire picture-taking process has evolved from film to digital photography. It's amazing just how images are now stored on flash drives, memory cards and discs which can be digitally manipulated using Photoshop and other editing software. These images are then digitally produces at photolabs or even at home using top-of-the-line printers. Nevertheless, these transitions do not seem to affect the use of optical filters. The purpose of filters still remain unchanged and that is to provide protection to the camera lens and also to achieve special effects when capturing images.

In previous articles I've discussed about the basic kinds of camera filters and their purposes. I'm pretty sure that you now have a clear idea why filters play a very indispensable role in photography whether film or digital. But choosing which kind of filter to use follows one basic rule of thumb: only use filters of the highest quality.

Tiffen filter is one of the most widely used quality filters in professional photography. I tis manufactured in the US using the most stringent standards. It is made using a proprietary process called ColorCare Technology to assure that they perform with accuracy and precision. No wonder even Hollywood studios trust the brand.

Don't you just hate it when you're trying to get a good picture of, say, a beautiful European castle, and here comes the sun spreading its glory unto your picture? The next thing you know, you have that irritating glare line on the photo you were supposed to show off to friends. Argh. I hate that.

That actually happened to me, except the setting was on the beach. Of course, I quite anticipated already the glare and shiny reflections due to the water and all. That was when I just received my own camera and I did not know how to play about the polarizer or the camera filter that could take away the glare.

It was only later that I learned about the types of polarizer I could use for my different cameras. Basically, there are two kinds. There's the linear polarizer, the cheaper filter, is great for my film camera. Then, there's also the circular polarizer, which is found on most modern cameras since they have the autofocus feature. Both filters work with a partly silvered mirror so that it can get rid of light captured by the lens. No wonder it's similar to polarized sunglasses, huh?

You may have noticed that camera filters do come in various types, but filters have three major applications or purpose. Filters are attached to a camera lens to protect it from scratches, dust or thumb marks which may damage it. They also serve to correct the colors and hues of the camera exposure using color filter options. Most importantly, filters can help you create special effects to produce more dramatic portraits.

Because filters have a variety of kinds, getting a filter for the camera seems to be a gargantuan task. When buying a camera filter one has to keep in mind your budget, intended use or application and your camera lens. If you intend to protect the cameras from ultraviolet rays of the sun, you would need a UV filter.

If you opt for a filter that can produce some special effects than there are filters that offer effects like the starburst, diffusion, soft focus, etc. If you want a complete set of filters, then that's better because you can get value for your money. Filter kit systems are compatible with most camera brands like Kodak, Canon, Fuji, Olympus, Sony, among others.

Camera filters are optical glass elements, either transparent or translucent, that is attached to a camera's lens. They serve the camera in many ways. The filter protects the lens and in addition it also changes the entering of light into the lens to capture a perfect photo. The filter also adds special effects or colors to the image.

Digital cameras also have filters that can be attached to the lens. Because the camera is digital you can manipulate the filter digitally which makes taking pictures easier. There are many different kinds of filters that can be attached to most digital cameras. The polarizing filters help minimize reflections when capturing an image through water and glass at an angle. They also help reduce bouncing light in shiny surfaces. This is also good for outdoor photography since it gives a deep or contrasting color of the skies which is an amazing effect on pictures.

Another kind is the neutral density filters. This kind of filter minimizes the light that is entering the lens to prevent the bright light effect in a photo image. And lastly, the UV filters which photographers can rely on against camera lens scratches or damage due to certain elements.