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Five Filter Myths—02/08/10

What you think you know about filters may be hurting your photos

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Think you know it all about lens filters, like exactly when and where and how and why you should use them? You may need to think again, especially if you’ve heard and believe any of these five myths about filters and their use.

1. Always use a filter to protect your new lens. UNLESS… that filter isn’t worthy of the lens it’s on. Why would you put a cheap 10-dollar UV filter on a top-notch $1,000 lens? You might as well protect it with a dirty sock. The lens’ optical quality is only as good as its weakest link—which is why its important that any filter you use is high-quality glass. Short of that, don’t filter just for protection. (Just be sure to be really careful with your new lens!)

2. It’s digital; you don’t need a filter. UNLESS… you care about making great photos rather than trying to fix poor photos in the computer. There are lots of great effects that you can achieve in the computer, in some cases even rivaling what filters can do during capture. But few people would argue that you shouldn’t get something right in camera if you’ve got the chance. Sure, don’t worry about subtle color correction when you’re shooting since you’re working with a RAW file that’s infinitely editable in post. But for polarizing and neutral density filtration? No amount of post works as effortlessly and effectively as filtering the lens on your camera.

3. I don’t need a GND—I’ve got a polarizer. UNLESS… you don’t want to darken the whole frame at once. Grad ND filters are standard operating procedure for landscape photographers who want to narrow the contrast range between two distinct areas of the frame—most often, bright skies and darker landscapes. The graduated filter is the only way to do this effectively in camera. An ND filter blocks light without shifting color, making it ideal for use when longer shutter speeds are required (if you want to impart motion blur to a waterfall, for example). A polarizer also blocks light, but it alters other aspects of the image too—including reflections and color. And a polarizer can’t be applied selectively to only one portion of the frame.

4. I don’t need a polarizer unless I want to shoot water or darken skies. UNLESS… you’d like to maximize the vividness and saturation of color in your images. True, polarizers are ideal for making blue skies deeper blue. But the way this is accomplished is the same reason polarizers can bring out other colors throughout a scene. Because the polarizing filter eliminates scattered light reflections, it eliminates them in the sky (from water vapor) making skies read as a deeper, richer blue. The same principle applies to green foliage or brightly colored flowers or literally any object on which reflections dampen the intensity of the color. It’s practically impossible to eliminate these subtle reflections any other way than with a polarizing filter on the lens.

5. Polarizers are so great, in fact, there’s no reason ever to take them off. UNLESS… you’d like to utilize reflections in your photograph. Reflection, and the contrast between bright highlights and shadows, can add dimension and shape to your photographs. Because polarizers are so great at reducing reflections, they can be a hindrance in those situations. Sometimes the subtle shape and nuance of a subject—a curve on a façade or the glow on human skin—comes from the subtle reflections from that subject’s surface. If you eliminate that snappy highlight reflection, in many instances you can eliminate all the life from the photo.

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