Ways to improve your Photography with Filters

The world of digital photography is not only camera, lenses, flash and tripod. There are other accessories that you can use and allow you to get stunning and spectacular pictures. One of these accessories is the filters.

If you are a photographer or belonging to SLR world, your compact camera allows you to screw in front of the lens, in this article you will learn what the filters are, what are they and how can they help you get gossip stunning photographs.

As its name implies, the filters are accessories that are placed in front of the camera lens in order to change the way the light enters it and is captured by the sensor. There are many types and uses of photographic filters that you will get benefits when making your shots compared to the computer editing (post production).

Worth mentioning that, with use, you can get results that are not possible to obtain once the picture was taken, such as using a neutral density filter to lower levels of exposure when photographing a waterfall or eliminate reflections of a window to photograph what is behind it.

When you get the shot it is very similar to the final photo, saving time on the computer editing. This has more to do with the traditional design process for the pictures, but require more knowledge of the instrument for each shot so that you can get to perform impossible effects using further editing.

Not the same merit make an excellent photograph using filters at the time of the taking, obtaining an almost final image, which after a few clicks, get something similar thanks to the computer being able to try different combinations to get the best.

A quality filters are not cheap, and get one of them do you have to shell out a considerable amount of money, not to mention that they are fragile and easily damaged if you are not careful enough with them.

The vast majority of these quality filters can only be achieved by custom given the price. Here we have prepared a short list of the most prestigious brands so that you consider:

1. Hoya
2. HiTech
3. Cokin
4. Tiffen
5. Rodenstock
6. Heliopan
7. B + W
8. Ray Singh
9. Formatt
10. Cromatek
11. Lee

Each brand has its advantages and disadvantages but if you order some filter brands that comment you just, you’re sure to have acquired a quality product.

There are different systems to attach a filter in front of your camera lens, and will depend on the type of camera, compact DSLR, you want to add one.

Screw consists ahead of the objective lens, a circular filter having the same diameter as the lens. Its main advantage is that, given the way these are screwed directly on the lens, not only protects but also ensures that stray light around the edges of these and end ruining the picture. The main disadvantage is that they are much less versatile to use than rectangular and also must have many filters of the same type as diameters have your glasses.

Rectangular filters are rectangular glass; various measures are put in front of your camera lens with a filter holder. Its main advantage is that allow much more versatility if you want to downgrade the sky using a gradient filter, you can choose to place the horizon height, something impossible to do with a circle. Its main disadvantage is the fragility of the crystals and, to an extra frame in front of the target be necessary in some cases can cause fainting or let unwanted light from the sides of these.

Not all photographs will require that use a filter for the shot, but there are certain photos that win as either aesthetic or technical if they use one of these filters. The use of filters is very common in landscape photography, where shots are made with long pre-processing and were looking to get effects that, in many cases, are not perceptible by the human or the eye, are not actually produced by nature, as it can be a red sky.

These filters are used to increase the contrast, achieve transparency and eliminate reflections from your photographs. It is one of the most used filters because it allows contrast scenes, dark blue sky, reduce haze, clouds clarify and eliminate glare from non-metallic surfaces such as water, glass etc..

These filters have no effect on the color of the scene, since its main use is to significantly reduce the amount of light that reaches the sensor. This type of filter is useful when in good lighting conditions, making long exposures are required. This means that, without changing the colors, can shoot with large apertures and shutter speeds very low, typically in situations where the picture would completely overexposed.

The Enhancer filter is used to enhance the warm colors of the scenes, changing little or nothing the rest of the colors. It is a very specific filter and recommended only to portray autumn sunrises or sunsets, reinforcing the warmer tones.

These filters are used to balance the different contrasts presented in a scene, ie, that this filter darkens some areas of photography and other not so you can get detail in both highlights and shadows.