Johan Ronsse photography

A post about the different photographic filters, this info is widely available so it’s mostly a summary for myself.

UV filter

This one just looks like a piece of glass you put in front of your lens. Mostly used by photographers to protect expensive lenses from harm. Rather have a scratch on the UV filter than the €1400 lens, right? Cheapest filter (€10-50). Also reduces haziness created by ultraviolet light, according to Wikipedia, but I have yet to see the difference in actual use.

Polarizer filter

This filter looks like a grey piece of glass. You can turn this filter to reduce reflections. A bit more expensive (€40-€120) This is great when photographing stuff on a glass table or cars. Supposedly also adds more contrast too (have not seen this in practice). If you look this kind of filter up you see tons of extreme A/B images (examples on Wikipedia) but the reality is a bit less spectacular.

A bit of a warning here, since the filter blocks some light you lose about 1,5 to 2 stops of exposure. 1 stop can be critical in low light situations so don’t run around with the polarizer on your camera all the time.

Neutral density filter

ND stands for neutral density filter. This one seems to look similar to a polarizing filter. I haven’t used this yet. Seems expensive for a filter (€100-200) Putting this on a camera modifies the intensity of the wavelengths of light equally i.e. it turns the brightness down. You can turn it to change the intensity. One ND filter I looked up claims up to 9 stops difference.

This supposedly allows you to shoot better in bright daylight (use lower apertures in the sun). An oft-stated example is also photographing waterfalls: using the ND filter you can use lower shutter speeds (without bringing in too much light so the photo looks overexposed). Looks like an interesting filter to play with!

A special type of ND filter called a graduated filter exists too, this seems nice for landscape photographers. However, wouldn’t you shoot a bracketed HDR these days and fix the exposure in post-processing?

Close up filter

Close up filters are basically magnifying glasses you put in front of your lens. Seems relatively cheap (€100 for 3). I read about this in the Up Close book about macro photography. I have yet to try this kind of filter.