Which camera filters do you need?

There are literally hundreds of different types of camera filters aimed at manipulating your images before they are taken. Filters can be really useful tools to help you get the look you want in your images but these days with great Photo shop tools available to us do we really need all these expensive filters?

Well as a professional landscape photographer I’m going to let you in on which filters you actually need so that you can buy the right ones without wasting your money.

Most filter effects can be done quickly in post processing using software like adobe photoshop and Lightroom, however some effects still can’t be replicated in software so you need to get the right filters for the job.

Circular polarising Filter

Circulalr polarising filters have many uses including making skies look a more rich blue colour which in turn helps white clouds to really pop. They also help to saturate colours in a scene and add contrast but all these effects can pretty much be done in software.

However there are uses which simply cant be copied in software such as the circular polarisers ability to cut reflections from wet and shiny surfaces. This is a great tool when you are shooting water or wet foliage or any highly reflective surfaces and it helps to bring out colour and detail in shots that would otherwise be hidden by the light reflecting off these things.

A circular polariser also makes a useful neutral density filter because they lower the amount of light entering your lens.

So a circular polarising filter should definitely be in your photography bag. I personally use Hoya Pro 1 filters and can recommend them although they can be a little tricky to clean as they smear a bit. The Hoya HD circular polarising filters dont have this issue.

You can click the image below to check out different filters on Amazon and if you buy through these links I will earn a small commission which helps with the running of this site, so thank you.

Graduated Neutral Density Filters

These filters work to balance the amount of light coming from different areas of your scene. They are usually used to lessen the amount of light from the brightest part of the scene. This is usually the filter enables your camera to capture all the light detail without the highlights being too bright (blown) or the shadows being too dark and not containing any detail (blocked up).

This can be replicated to some extent in lightroom and photoshop but it is much better to capture the image correctly when you take the picture, because if the highlights are blown that detail is lost forever and it cannot be recovered by using the ND grad tools of software. The same goes for loss of detail in the shadows, which although it can be recovered to some degree it will introduce noise into your image.

Instead of using graduated ND filters it is possible to use HDR techniques to merge multiple exposures but this can sometimes create a very different almost surreal look to photos and needs to be used with care. It also means more shots have to be taken and more work has to be done on the computer to get a finished image.

The other problem with HDR is that you have to blend multiple exposures which means that if there is movement in your scene then this will show in the final image.

You can process a single file in photoshop twice, in effect processing it once for the highlights and once for the shadows but this doesn’t always work for scenes with very high contrast.

Ultimately most landscape photographers will simply find it much easier and more flexible to have some ND Grads in their bag of tricks.

Now which filters should you go for?

Well in terms of which manufacturer then this decision will boil down to what you are willing to pay.

Lee filters (which I and a lot of pros use) are certainly amongst the best because they are very neutral and therfore do not affect the images colour balance. However they are one of the more expensive options so if you want to save money then a lot of people happily use Hitech filters and Cokin filters which both have lots of choices and options but you may find the colour neutrality is not quite as good as Lee which could result in colour casts affecting your images.

Soft or Hard grads?

This of course depends on what and where you shoot most often but for most people soft edged grads (where the transition betweeen the darkened bit of the filter and the clear part is smooth) will be more useful because the transition between filtered and unfiltered parts of the scene is not noticeable in your final image.

However if you do a lot of photography at the coast where you have a clear, straight horizon then you may want to consider hard edged filters where roughly half is filtered and half is not, with a clear and abrubt transition between the two. The transition point is then often placed on the horizon line where there is a clearly defined edge between the brightness of the sky and the darker tones of the sea or land.

ND grads come in different strengths, measured in stops of light. The higher the number of stops the darker the filter will be and the more light it will cut out.

I would recommend starting with a 0.9 ( 3 stop) and 0.6 (2stop)  in your chosen variety or you could try one of the kits offered by the manufacturers which will often include a 0.3, 0.6 + 0.9 (1,2 +3) stops in your chosen variety. These are a great place to start out and see which filters you find the most useful.

One tip is that if you buy Lee filters, thanks to the fairly limited supply (as of writing this article in Feb 2012) they hold their resale value very well so you could try them out and if you find you don’t use some then simply sell them on Ebay.

Again if you found this info useful I would really appreciate it if you bought through my links. It wont cost you any more but will earn me a small commission which allows me to take the time to provide more articles and tips in the future.

Neutral Density Filters

Neutral density filters are used to reduce the amount of light that is let into your lens.

Why would you want to do this ?

Well it’s not to darken the image which of course you could do in software. There are a few uses for this, one of them is to gain creative control of your images.

If you are shooting water on a bright day (I would recommend saving shots of rivers etc for overcast days but sometimes this is not possible) then you may find that because there is so much light around your shutter speed is very fast.

Well whats the problem with this I hear you say? The problem is that if you want to get that silky smooth effect that you see in the pro’s shots of water you will need to be using a slower shutter speed (often 1/15 or slower). On a bright day even if you stop your lens down to a small aperture like f/22 and use a base level ISO like ISO 100 your shutter speed may still be too fast, not to mention you lose a little image quality due to refraction at the smallest apertures.

So this is where neutral density filters can help to limit the amount of light entering your lens, resulting in the ability to use longer shutter speeds.

Again there are various manufacturers selling a variety of strengths of filter. I would recommend buying your ND filters and ND grad filters from the same manufacturer if possible to ensure they are compatible. You will also have the choice of screw on ND filters which screw on to the end of your lens or slot in ones which slot in to a special filter holder which then attaches to your lenses.

I would go for a slot in design because this type of system will fit all your lenses with the addition of cheap adapter rings rather than having to buy new filters for each thread size when you get new lenses. You can then mix and match which filters you wish to use for a certain scene by simply sliding them into the filter holder.

Your circular polarising filter will generally be a screw on type design which you will attach to your lens before putting on other filters.

Now here’s the kicker here, because you will have already bought a circular polarising filter which can work as a ND filter too you probably only really need to get one ND filter in addition to this, which saves you a little money. I personally have a Hoya Pro 1D Circular polarising filter (which acts as a 2 stop ND filter) combined with a Lee 3 stop ND filter and I can highly recommend this combination.

You could possibly improve this by using a 4 stop filter instead but either way you should be covered for most situations.

I will link to these items on amazon and I hope that you will buy from there if the site has helped you out.

So I guess that just about sums up the most important filters that every photographer should have in their bag. You will be amazed at the difference these filters can make to your images. No more of those skies that are way too bright or where the ground is just black. And by using a circular polarising filter you can make your photos pop just like the professionals do .

I find warehouse express are a great store to order filters and other photographic equipment from too, they have quick delivery, great customer service, excellent prices and tend to get hold of Lee stock quite quickly so you may want to click on the link below to check them out.

Or you can see some great landscape photography tips to help you improve your shots.

As I briefly mentioned in my article on the Exposure triangle  Aperture can be explained as the width of the lens opening which lets light into the camera, the wider this opening the more quickly light is allowed in to the camera and onto its sensor (or film).

If you want to allow light in more quickly then you simply use a larger aperture. Aperture is measured in f/numbers generally  ranging from f/1 -f/22.

The only confusion comes because the larger the aperture the lower the number, so f/4 is larger than f/16 for example.

Light is measured in stops and common apertures are as follows:

f/1 , f/1.2, f/1.8, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22

Increasing your aperture (eg f/4 to f/5.6) will result in the halving of the amount of light entering your camera and decreasing your aperture (eg f/8 to f/5.6) will result in the doubling of light being let in to your camera.

So which apertures are good in which situations?

Larger apertures like f/1-f/4 result in narrower depth of field (the depth of a scene in focus) which can be useful for throwing the background out of focus for portrait shots where you want your subject in sharp focus and the background blurred so it does not distract from your model.

Middle apertures like f/8 and f/11 often offer the best lens performance so if you do not care about depth of field because everything is at the same distance or you just want the best performance you lens can offer then these middle apertures are a great choice.

Small apertures such as f/16 and f/22 offer the largest depth of field and therfore are popular with landscape photographers who want everything in a scene to appear sharp.

However a word of caution, although these apertures will often give the largest depth of field the issue of diffraction can actually undermine image quality so you may actually be better off using a larger aperture like f/11. A quick explanation of diffraction can be found over on Luminous landscape

Another element of the photographic triangle which I talked about in my article The exposure triangle is Shutter Speed which relates to the amount of time which the shutter remains open to let light onto your sensor, it is measured in time ranging from 30 seconds or more to 1/8000th of a second or less.

Again shutter speed can be measured in stops and changing your shutter speed from one stop to the next will result in the doubling or halving of the amount of light let into your camera.

Here are the stops for shutter speed.

1/8000, 1/4000, 1/2000, 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 sec, 2 sec, 4 sec, 8 sec, 15 sec, 30 sec

Faster shutter speeds allow you to freeze fast moving action like sports or wildlife and capture sharp shots. Slower shutter speeds are useful in poorly lit scenes if you need to allow more light on to your sensor to get a properly exposed shot. They are also great for artistic shots of scenes which you can see in a number of my images in the gallery

The best way I have ever heard to explain ISO is to imagine that your camera is a bee hive and that ISO represents the number of bees and light is represented as honey.

When there are just 100 bees they can collect x amount of honey in a certain amount of time. If you double the number of bees to 200 hundred (equivalent to increasing ISO by 1 stop) they could collect the same amount of honey in half the time or double the amount of honey in the same time. Now if you have 400 bees they could collect  the same amount that 200 bees could in half the time or collect double the amount of honey in the same time and so on and so on.

So for every stop increase in ISO your sensor is able to gather light twice as fast.

Here are the common stops for ISO:

50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12500

Increasing your ISO doesn’t come for free. Everytime you increase your ISO your images will become more noisy, which means they will contain little bits of what almost looks like graininess. This is due to the way that increasing ISO works. Basically when you increase your ISO you are increasing the voltage running through your sensor, this in turn results in electrical interference in your images in the form of noise.

Camera manufacturers have made great improvements in this area in recent years but it is still better to use a lower ISO if possible to achieve the best image quality.

The Exposure Triangle

The exposure triangle or photographic triangle refers to the inter-connected relationship of the 3 elements that make up an exposure or image.

In the excellent book Understanding Exposure Bryan Peterson explains about the reciprocal relationship between Aperture, shutter speed and ISO and that if one element is altered it effects the others.

Aperture can be explained as the width of the lens opening which lets light into the camera, the wider this opening the more quickly light is allowed in to the camera and onto its sensor (or film). You can learn more about this in my article on aperture

Shutter Speed is the amount of time which the shutter remains open to let light onto your sensor, it is measured in time ranging from 30 seconds or more to 1/8000th of a second or less. To get more information about shutter speed have a look at my article explaining shutter speed

ISO is your sensors (or films) sensitivity to light. It determines how quickly your sensor can gather light.

For a great explanation check out my article which explains ISO

So how is this a triangle?

Well all these values affect one another so if you take a shot that is properly exposed at f/5.6, 1/250 and ISO 200 and then you decide to stop your aperture down by 1 stop from f/5.6 to f/8 because you want to increase depth of field that would result in half the amount of light now reaching your camera’s sensor.

In order to obtain a correct exposure now you would have to change one of the other settings to compensate. Your options are to decrease shutter speed by 1 stop to 1/125 of a second or to increase ISO by 1 stop to 400.

Now this is where practise pays off because after a while you will be able to judge which option will give a better result under the circumstances. Lets say you are photographing moving objects like sports then decreasing your shutter speed may not be an option because it might result in blurry shots. So the correct choice in this situation would be to increase ISO to 400.

But if you were taking a photo of a landscape where everything is still then the shutter speed would not be so crucial and therfore it would be preferable to change it rather than increase the ISO, because increasing the ISO would result in more noise and worse picture quality.

The Key to mastering the Triangle

The key to mastering the triangle and therfore exposure is to understand what effect each element has on your pictures and to be able to prioritise what’s important for that particular image.

Most of my work for example is landscapes and for me picture quality is the most important thing because I make large prints to sell. Therefore I very rarely increase the ISO on my camera above 100. The only times I do so are when I wish to take a shot at a certain shutter speed (perhaps to capture the movement of water in a certain way or to ensure I freeze grass being blown about in strong winds.) and am unable to increase my aperture because it would result in a loss of depth of field.

Being a landscape photographer means most of my images are shot at apertures of f/8-f/16 to try and maximise depth of field. When you look at my priorities when making images you can see that aperture is my first concern, followed by keeping as low an ISO as possible. It is only when moving elements are contained within a scene that I give much thought to shutter speed so this is the setting that is altered most freely when trying to create correct exposures.

A Wildlife photographer would no doubt replace my priority of aperture to one of shutter speed. This is because they need to be able to freeze moving subjects which requires the use of  fast shutter speeds. Aperture will still have to be considered to ensure that enough of the subject is still in focus. ISO will therefore be the setting that is most free to alter in order to obtain a correct exposure. This is why pro sports and wildlife photographers really appreciate high ISO performance because it enables them to use faster shutter speeds in poor light.

If you are able to determine what your priorities are when capturing a shot then you will be able to make informed choices about which settings to use and which to alter to enable you to expose your photos correctly.

Landscape Photography: Lines

It’s easy to take a photograph of your surroundings, and you might get lucky enough to encompass some of the great features of the landscape.  However, to truly engage your viewers and impress your family and friends, you should find a way to direct the eye deeper into the photograph.  This doesn’t mean that wide broad, expansive photographs aren’t valuable.  Rather, it is important to vary your portfolio and experiment with the natural lines of the land.

Draw the viewer in

Including leading lines in your photographs is a simple way to achieve this.  Because the eye is naturally drawn toward lines and other block shapes, the inclusion of lines is a simple way to further engage viewers and increase their interest in your photos.  This is a natural response, so viewers are likely to be unaware that they are even reacting this way.

While vertical lines will bring the viewer deeper into the photograph, horizontal lines are an alternative that can create a sense of harmony and balance.  In both instances, lines will guide the viewer’s eye in a specific direction and create a clear focus within the photograph.  Experiment with the angles of each line to find the best focal point.

Make use of what’s in front of you

These lines may be man-made, such as traffic lines on a road or lines created by telephone poles and wires.  Traffic lines are an especially good example because they tend to be bold and well defined, and the bright white or yellow stripes are easy to identify.  Likewise, railway tracks are well defined lines that can definitely enhance viewer interest.  All of these will direct your viewers’ eyes into the photograph.  This serves to complement the landscape portion of each photo.

Natural lines may include streams of water or rows of crops in farmland.  Shores and shorelines, such as the beach at the ocean or the bank of a river, are also good natural lines.  Though these are less well defined, they still tend to include lines that can again be used to direct the eye.

When you use this approach, be sure that the lines lead into or out of the main focal point of the photograph.  Regardless of what you intend to be the focus, lines will guide the eye in a specific direction.  It’s best to arrange your photograph so that they are angled toward the distant mountain chain, sunset, forest, or any other focus point you may have in mind.

Ultimately, lead in lines are a great way to enhance your story.  Every photograph is designed to share a story and landscape photographs are supposed to share an entire experience.  Because you can take control of the image and use the brain’s natural response to lines to your advantage, you can be sure that each viewer catches the highlight of your photographs, even if they aren’t aware of the effect of these lines.

Tell your story

Because this adds such value to your photographs’ stories, it is important to keep this in mind before snapping the shot in the first place. Be sure that you understand what your focus is and you know the message you’re trying to send.  Is it just a beautiful landscape, or is there more to the story?  When you have a clear message that you’re trying to convey and an experience to share that enhances your images, the use of lines is a good way to spike viewer interest and provide you with a great storytelling opportunity.

When photographing the landscape, it is so important to take advantage of any natural features that can enhance your photographs.  The mark of a talented photographer is one who can use these features to their best advantage to create a truly stunning masterpiece.

A really great book that will tell you everything you need to know about composition is The Phtoographers Eye by Michael Freeman, it’s a fantastic book full of great insight and knowledge and one I refer back to time and time again.

Black and White Photography Tips

If you are like me and you love black and white photography then hopefully you will find this quick list of black and white photography tips helpful.

Shoot in Raw format

No matter whether I’m shooting for colour or black and white I almost always shoot in raw format because this allows you to capture the maximum detail and have the greatest ability to edit your images in post processing. Even if you use your cameras black and white mode shooting in raw allows you to retain all the colour information too.

Convert to black and white in post processing not in camera

The reason behind this is that generally your computer and software will do a lot better job of creating your black and white images, giving you far more control over how the final photo looks.

Software like Adobe Lightroom 3 and Nik silver efex Pro can help you to create beautiful black and white images easily and quickly.

Shoot on cloudy days

A lot of landscape photographers dont particularly like grey overcast days but they can be fantastic for creating interesting black and white images. Even better are stormy days where clouds are racing overhead. These clouds can help to give black and white images great drama.

Keep to a low ISO setting

Using the lowest ISO (for more info on camera settings see my camera settings guide) possible to retain image quality and avoid noise. Sometimes a little grain can add to the character of a black and white image but it’s best to add this later rather than have a noisy image.

Composition is Key

Composition is one of the most important elements in any photography but this is particularly true of black and white photography because you can not rely on vivid colours to make your shot interesting. Therefore pay particularly close attention to your composition. For more tips on composition you can check out some of my landscape photography tips