Today I'm going to talk about filters in photography and which ones I recommend
there are many filters in photography from the ones that screw on to the front
of your lenses magnetic ones that click on really quickly right through to ones
that use special brackets so you can slide them down in front of your lens
I'm going to show you each of them what they do and how they will change your
photos the first one I'm going to show you is the UV filter this is a clear
filter and it's meant to cut out ultraviolet light if you've ever been
into a shop to buy a lens they will usually try to sell you a UV filter to
go with your new lens but I'm not sure it's such a good purchase UV filters
used to be practical for film cameras as a lot of film stock is sensitive to UV
light I remember I had one for my EOS 5d but nowadays digital sensors can cope
with UV light a lot better now I understand the principle of having one
to protect your front element but nowadays these front elements are pretty
robust and can withstand quite a bit of weather we normally take them out in
without getting damaged and as most of us photographers are pretty precious
about our kit it is in safe hands well most of the time anyway also if you have
a lens hood on the camera this will offer a bit of protection I've dropped a
lens before and the lens hood broke but the lens didn't one thing I don't like
about UV filters is that it's another piece of glass in between your subject
and your sensor and this really doesn't have to be there especially the really
cheap ones that are available online so in most circumstances I don't use one
the one lens I do use them with when the weather is really bad or if I'm out in
the desert when it's really windy is the Tamron 17 to 28 millimeter this has a
groove around the front element that is the perfect place for dust sand and dirt
to catch so I don't take any chances with this especially in the desert now
an ND filter is a neutral density filter this means it should be neutral in the
color cast and we'll have a different density depending on what filter
you get or basically will cut out a certain amount of light from getting to
your sensor the perfect analogy for this is that it's like a pair of sunglasses
for your camera now I really do like fixed nd filters and have a whole host
of them for my camera they can do anything from letting you open up the
aperture in the middle of the day whilst controlling your shutter speed they can
get rid of people in your travel photos and they can also slow down your shutter
speed enough to blur any kind of movement in your shots they come in
varying strengths from a one stop filter right through to a 15 stop filter and
beyond a one stop filter will reduce your shutter speed by one stop of light
so for example if you have a shutter speed of one one-thousandth of a second
you'll cut it down to one 500th of a second so having the amount of light a
10 stop filter will reduce it from one one thousandth of a second to one second
and a fifteen stop filter will reduce it from one one thousandth of a second to
thirty seconds so having a range of these is well worth it and you can
really do so much with them I have a three stop a full stop a six stop in a
10 stop ND filter and these give me everything that I need now the more
expensive ones tend to be closer to having a neutral color whereas the
cheaper ones sometimes produce a bit of a color cast and it can be really hard
to remove when you're editing your photos now if you haven't seen it
already check out Mack Rangers test that he did on 10 stop nd filters I've got a
link in the I in the corner and in the description he had around about 15
different Indies so it's well worth watching I have the magnetic filters
from free well and they're pretty good value for money and really quick to use
as well the kind of middle of the range cost wise and are as neutral as I've
seen especially with their ten stop nd filters but there are many other
reputable brands out there I definitely recommend getting at least a couple of
nd filters and I'd start off with say a four stop and a 10 stop ND filter a
graduated filter is a filter that has half Clair glass and half darkened so
you can see on this one the bottom half is clear and the top half has the nd in
it now these are slightly more specialized filters and a great when you
have a rate horizon and a bright sky in this
example I have the Sun setting and if I was to just take a photo of this scene
without the filter the sky would be overexposed or the ground would be
underexposed with a graduated filter they normally work best in these filter
brackets once you have framed up your shot you
can slide the filter into place and drop the exposure of the sky you can get the
border between the clear glass and the ND piece of glass exactly where you want
it in your frame and that's where these brackets really come in handy this will
give you a better overall exposure bringing the sky and the land closer
together and within the dynamic range of your camera if you're not sure what
dynamic range is click on the eye in the corner or the link in the description to
my quick video on that subject now these grad filters are great when
the horizon is flat but when something does protrude into the sky or when
you're in the mountains and the line between the darker and the brighter
parts of your image aren't flat you'll run into problems also if you are going
to get these I'd recommend the bracketed ones over the screw on ones as with the
bracketed ones you can put the horizon exactly where you want the next filter
I'm going to talk about is the polarizer and this is a filter that will restrict
the amount of polarized light coming into your camera they normally rotate
and so you can change the intensity of this filter I've done a video on these
already so if you haven't seen it yet click on the eye in the corner or the
link in the description you can create more saturated colors in your photos it
can deepen the blues in the sky as well as reducing the amount of light
reflected from shiny surfaces if we look at these leaves you can see them with
and without a polarizer you can also use them when photographing through glass if
there is a bit of glare on that glass normally a polarizer will get rid of
this generally a polarizing filter works best at 90 degrees to the direction of
the sunrays it is one of those filters where you do need to be a little bit
picky about when you use it but when you get the hang of it
it's really good filter and I do recommend getting one a variable ND
filter does the same as a normal fixed ND and the only difference is that when
you rotate it it darkens or lightens the
shot so I have these two different ones I have this one from Tiffin and these
ones from free well the Tiffin is good from about one to five stops but does
have a slightly blue color cast also it doesn't have hard stops and if you go
beyond five stops you'll tend to get this X pattern appearing in your shots
and it does make them unusable now if you see companies claiming that their nd
filters don't have this X pattern be very wary of them unless they have the
hard stop like these free well ones or the Pizza MacKinnon polar probe variable
n DS you can see with this one as I turn it it stops me from turning it too far
so this means it won't go into that bit of polarization where you get that X
pattern in your images the two pieces of glass in a variable nd are polarized and
when you do rotate them it reduces or increases the amount of light depending
on which way you do rotate them so with these you will get a bit of a color
shift due to this polarization now the benefits of a variable nd that you only
have to have two filters and you can cover most bases with this set from free
well I can cover anything from a two stop to a nine stop reduction now I
don't recommend getting ones without hard stops as it's so easy to go into
that X pattern especially when you're rushing around trying to get that shot
really quickly if you are a photographer I'd still recommend getting fixed nd
filters over the variable ones as you're only shooting through one piece of glass
now if you're a videographer variable ND filters are great and you can keep your
shutter down following that 180 degrees shutter rule you can also use it to have
a wide aperture in the middle of the day to get that shallow depth of field look
and more importantly you can adjust them subtly as the exposure changes whilst
you're filming now there are things like starburst filters and colored filters
but these seem a little bit gimmicky so the filter list that I've just gone
through are the only ones that I'd recommend for photography and
videography now one last thing you will need a place to put them all most
companies do supply them with individual cases but if you have these in your bag
they'll rattle around and they'll quickly take up space so I'd recommend
getting a pouch of some kind now I have this third-party pouch and it's perfect
for me I can slot all of my filters in there
and I can access them really quickly and these are nice soft padded pouches if
you want to get one of these I've linked it in the description below now do you
think I've missed any out or are there any other filters do you think that I
could benefit from let me know in the comments below
it'd be great to hear your thoughts and if you like this video try this video
next it's Mack Rangers massive ND filter test if you've seen it check out my
waterfall video down here and if you haven't already remember to subscribe to
my channel for weekly tutorials on photography thanks for watching and I'll
see you next time