Anna Saverimuttu's Photography Blog

Useful photographic filters

Whilst it's now easy enough to adjust our camera's white balance to suit different lighting conditions, or get rid of unwanted colour casts in Photoshop, sometimes it's still useful to have a few filters to hand that enable us to get the right effects in-camera, rather than having to fiddle around on the computer afterwards.

So, which are some of the more useful filters to have handy in your kitbag?

Neutral Density

A grey neutral-density filter is useful to have for several reasons.  Although it is colourless, it will help cut down the amount of light entering the lens, which is great if you want to use a slower shutter speed for a particular creative effect, such as blurring the image, or maintain a wide aperture in bright light while shooting at a high ISO, thereby not sacrificing your shallow depth-of-field.

Polarising Filter

A polarising filter has a special molecular structure which affects the transmission of light-waves in a particular way.  Normally, unpolarised light-waves vibrate in any number of different planes, although always at right angles to the direction in which they travel.  Polarised light, (for instance light from those parts of a clear blue sky which are at a 90-degree angle to the sun, or light reflected off a shiny, non-metallic surface, such as a window) vibrates along just one plane.

So, what does this mean for your photographs?  By attaching a polarising filter to the front of the camera lens you can control whether the polarised light passes through or is blocked by the filter, simply by rotating it.  The special properties of the filter mean that when its lines are parallel to the line of travel of the polarised light, this light will be transmitted; rotating it until the lines are at right-angles to the plane of travel, means that the polarised light will be blocked - an effective way of getting rid of distracting reflections in your shot or darkening a blue sky.

Ultra-violet filter

Although they look completely transparent, UV filters will absorb the UV light that can cause the blue-tinged, hazy effect that is especially noticeable when shooting landscapes or seascapes.

Get creative - use a tripod

Tripods are one of those bits of gear that photographers love and loathe in equal measure.  I know that mine can be the bane of my life - it's heavy, cumbersome and awkward to carry.  And yet, it can be invaluable on certain occasions.

How tripods can help you get creative with your photography

Tripods slow you down. 

Yes, they may slow your progress down if you're trying to run whilst carrying one, but tripods are also great for slowing down the picture-taking process.  If you have your camera mounted on a tripod, you're less likely to get snap-happy and just fire off shots left, right and centre.  Using a tripod means that you are free to walk around your subject, find the best angle and think a little harder about your composition.

Tripods provide stability. 

Stability is what you need in very low lighting conditions, where you'll be using slow shutter speeds: if you try and handhold your camera whilst using a very slow shutter speed, such as 1/15 of a second, you'll end up with camera shake and a blurry photo.  However, if you use a tripod, you can leave your camera's shutter open for varying lengths of time without having to worry. 

Outdoors, this means that you can record subject movement as a blur. So, for example, a slow shutter speed will record a river or a waterfall as a blur of movement, whilst car lights will record as trails of different coloured light against a dark background - everything else that is stationary, though, will remain sharp.

Indoors, at say an event such as a wedding or a party, the usual option is to light everything with a flashgun. Now whilst flash photography is indispensable on such occasions, there will usually also be some good opportunities for turning the flash off, and mounting your camera on a tripod.  Often, a party venue will have interesting lighting effects, and a church may be lit partly by candlelight; flashlight will over-power any such light sources and destroy the ambience that they create. Using a tripod, however, means that you can record all these different lighting effects and really conjure up the atmosphere of the event.  Of course, this means that if people are moving whilst you're taking the photograph, they will record as blurs, but in these instances, it's more important to capture the feel of the occasion, rather than to concentrate on recording everything as sharply and clearly as possible.