Filters - Are they needed?

richke

richke

Well-known member
My wife is asking me want I want from christmas and I really want an external LCD but it's out of price range right now :) - so the only thing that has grabbed my attention are the filters you can by. I found three awhile back that I thought seemed cool but are they needed? I use Adobe Premiere to do colo corrections and whatnot which to me fixes the issues the Filters would do. They aren't to pricey and I listed the ones that caught my eye. What do you guys and gals think? Or is there something else I should be getting, filter wise?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/72710-REG/Tiffen_43UVP_43mm_UV_Protector_Filter.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/408008-REG/Hoya_GIK43GB_43mm_Introductory_Filter_Kit.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/56628-REG/Tiffen_43CP_43mm_Circular_Polarizing_Filter.html

Thanks
Rich
 
The UV filter is useful mostly to provide physical protection to the front of the lens, especially if you use the camera in dusty or wet conditions, or where there's a chance you might bump into something that could scratch the front element. There is controversy about whether this is worth the slight image degradation from adding another piece of glass in front of the lens; I have decided that it is generally valuable on my run'n'gun camera (HMC80 in my case).

The polarizer is valuable when you're dealing with reflections from glass or water, or want to increase the saturation of a blue sky. Highly useful and recommended.

The "warming" filter, probably not so much. It's just as easy and more controllable to do minor color correction in post. If you auto white balance after installing this filter, you will cancel out its effect.

Not on your list, but essential, are neutral density filters. A 0.9 (three stops) is a good starting point when shooting outdoors with the HMC40/80 -- it gets the aperture more into the "sweet spot" of maximum sharpness and helps you avoid diffraction softening and the weird diamond-shaped bokeh of the HMC's lens. 0.6 (2 stops) and 1.2 (4 stops) NDs are potentially useful as well.

You might want to look at some of the softening/fog/diffusion/contrast reduction filters as well, like the Tiffen Pro Mists (start with the 1/4 or 1/2 strength).

I don't think colored filters are of much use anymore in the digital age, but the ones I've mentioned here all make sense depending on where and what you shoot, and the look you're going for.

- Greg
 
What Greg said about ND filters. The ND scheme on the 40 (80 too?) is not strong enough to shoot 1080/30P in bright daylight with a reasonable shutter speed. If you close the lens down much past f/5.6, your IQ will go soft enough to notice, and it gets worse from there. It is a idiosyncracy of the cam that you live with to get sharp images on the cheap. I don't even mind the ND thingy feature, I just wish it was stronger.

Grant
 
Thank for the info. ND filters I have heard about before but I forgot about them. I will look into what you suggested thanks for the info!
 
I am looking over at B&H at the filters and to me by the stills they show...it looks worse. Everything seems to look more blurry, in my eyes. I guess this is not what I was expecting...
 
richke said:
I am looking over at B&H at the filters and to me by the stills they show...it looks worse. Everything seems to look more blurry, in my eyes. I guess this is not what I was expecting...
Click to expand...

Most of the dinky stills that you'll find on a vendor's website are decades old scans from the manufacturers' sales brochures, and have been through so many generations of resizing and manipulation that they bear little resemblance to reality -- they're essentially meaningless. A decent filter -- and by "decent" I would mean one that is relatively new and from a name-brand manufacturer like B+W, Hoya HMC series, Tiffen, etc. -- won't change the colors much (unless it's meant to, of course) and has a really negligible effect on flare and sharpness unless you start stacking lots of them together on the front of the lens. It's almost always a good idea to do a new white balance after adding or removing a filter, however. I do have one B+W polarizer that tends to add a slight red/brown cast to the dark areas of my pictures, but a color balance with the filter in place cleans that up just fine.

Eastman Kodak used to have a remarkable variety of technical literature, including several books on filters, that they sold at very reasonable prices ... not so anymore, alas. One that is still available is:

http://www.amazon.com/KODAK-Photographic-Filters-Handbook-Publication/dp/0879856580

With used prices as low as $1.65, this would be well worth having, even though it's extremely technical. It probably doesn't address digital or video specifically, but the general information still applies.

- Greg
 
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