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Use of Filters
Keith Truman
Melbourn & District Photographic Club
January 2013
(or “When Filters might be used to change the way a scene looks”)
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To be covered • Polarising Filter • ND (Neutral Density) Grad • ND
• When you may want to use these
filters • What can go wrong........
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POLARISING FILTER
• Uses
– Enhancing skies and clouds
– Managing reflections (in glass/water)
– Saturating colours
• What can go wrong
– Over-polarisation
• Brands
– Hoya, Lee, Cokin, Kood etc
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Or any range in between
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Or any range in between
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Enhancing colours. Great for autumn, Good when foliage is wet
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Over-polarised?????
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Polarisers Things to be aware of
• Polarising filters work best on sunny days with the sun at an angle of about 90° to the subject
• On grey, overcast days they may have little or no effect
• Vignetting if you leave UV filter on and add Polariser
• Uneven polarisation when using wide angle lens
• Polarisers are in effect a 2-stop filter
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ND Grad Filters • Neutral Density filters reduce the light without
changing the colour
• Almost always used to balance the light in the sky with light on land
• A large difference in brightness between sky and foreground is beyond a digital camera’s ability to see and record – A lot of times the sky is much brighter than the ground, so
the ground looks ok but the sky comes out pure white, or the sky looks fine but the ground looks too dark.
– Blown, white skies familiar to anyone?
• Can bring texture to dull skies
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Reduces light to 50%
ie 1 stop
Reduces light to 25%
ie 2 stops
Reduces light to 12.5% ie 3 stops
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With ND Grad
No ND Grad
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Grad pulled too far down over horizon
Note – horizons aren’t always straight so need to take care where the Grad line comes
Hard Grads Soft Grads
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Forgetting to rotate Grad when switching between Portrait and Landscape
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Forgetting to straighten Grad
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Can get strange colour casts which can be easily removed using software
Magenta cast in sky removed
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Availability of ND Grad
• Cokin – kit is £45 from Amazon
• Lee (glass)
– expensive but the best – £100 to get started
• Grads for Compacts/CSCs
– Cokin Snap System • £50 for Kit
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ND Filters
• Primarily used to slow down water motion
• Used when you want to use a longer shutter speed than is ordinarily possible due to the brightness of the conditions
• Available in a range of strengths depending on how much you wish to cut out the light
• Often give a colour cast (which can be removed)
• Will always need to use a Tripod
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ND2 ND4 ND8 Big
Stopper ND1000
Reduces light to 50%
ie 1 stop
Reduces light to 25%
ie 2 stops
Reduces light to 50%
ie 3 stops
Reduces light by
10 stops
Assume 1/30th at f11 without filter
Becomes 1/15th
Becomes 1/8th
Becomes ¼ sec
Becomes 1 minute
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0.3 seconds at f16 1/4 second at f13
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13 seconds at f9
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2 seconds at f11
Image taken using ND Grad for sky and ND combined
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Big Stoppers
• Hitech Big Stopper
– £65
• Lee Big Stopper
– £100
– High Quality Glass
• All generally give colour casts which can be removed
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1/13th sec at f11
3 minutes at f11
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45 secs at f16 Correcting colour casts
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Or just convert to Black and white
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ND 4 0.6 seconds at f11
Big Stopper 25 seconds at f13
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Deciding how much to blur.........
0.8 secs
2.5 secs 2 minutes
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Finally.........
• Filters don’t have to be used but......
–They may enhance an image or allow a shot which ordinarily might not be possible
–Combinations of filters can also be considered (e.g., blurring moving water AND using ND Grad for the sky)