They are completely clear and designed to be kept permanently attached to the lens — although you might want to remove them when using other filter types or a holder. Protect filters do exactly that, guarding the front element of the lens against dust, dirt, sand, moisture and scratches.
Manfrotto Professional Protect filters are designed with the professional and enthusiast in mind, who require maximum protection. The filter is water repellent and constructed to repel scratches and oil while boasting an antistatic and anti-reflective coating.
Overall, a protect filter is a very wise investment , potentially saving you huge sums should you drop your lens — after all, it is much cheaper to replace a damaged filter than it is a lens. When shooting landscape photographs in challenging weather conditions — when spray, snow, dust or sand are being blown toward the camera — I would recommend you keep a UV or Protect filter attached to your lens to ensure it stays clean and damage free. For landscape photography, a polarizer is a must have filter.
Arguably, no other in-camera filter will have a greater impact on your images. By blocking polarized light from entering the lens, a polarizing filter is able to restore natural saturation, contrast and vibrancy. Doing so will result in photographs with added punch and oomph. Polarizers are typically circular, screw-in type filters. They are made from a thin foil of polarizing material sandwiched between two circular pieces of glass.
They are intuitive to use. You should be able to see reflections come and go and the intensity of colours strengthen and fade.
The sun contains most polarized light in the areas that are at 90degrees to it. Metallic objects, like polished steel and chrome plate, do not reflect polarised light and so remain unaffected by the filter. Using the filter is very easy ; simply rotate it until you achieve the effect you like.
For landscape photography, a polarizer is most popular for making blue skies appear more vibrant. However, it is also useful for reducing the glare reflecting from wet and shiny leaves and foliage , making it a very useful filter for photography of woodland interiors, rural views and even close-ups of flowers.
Manfrotto famous for its quick release filter adapters is among the brands producing high quality polarizing filters , available in a variety of lens diameters up to 82mm in size.
Arguably, a polarizer is the most useful and essential landscape filter. It is a filter with the potential to transform your images. Although they are best known for their effect on clear blue skies, polarizers are great filters when shooting water and woodland interiors.
They will eliminate the glare from water and radiating from wet, shiny leaves in order to produce results with far more colour saturation and impact. Polarizing filters are renowned for their effect on blue skies.
When I shot these colourful beach huts, I adopted a low angle and rotated my polarizer until the sky looked at its most saturated in order to achieve maximum impact. The full effect of a polarizing filter can look very seductive through the viewfinder. However, the most pronounced effect will not always produce the best, or most natural looking result. Be mindful of this when using one. When fully polarized, you can encounter certain problems, for example over polarization.
This will create unnatural looking results, so be careful not to overdo the effect. Cloudless skies and photographs taken at higher altitudes are at most risk of looking too dark. You should be able to detect the problem through the viewfinder, but always review your images and check that skies remain natural looking. If skies look too dark, simply reduce the level of polarization by rotating the filter.
Uneven polarization is another common problem. At certain angles to the sun, you may find the effect of the filter is irregular — with the sky being darker in some areas, more than others. Short focal lengths, between mm, are most prone to the problem due to the broad expanse of sky they are able to capture.
To alleviate unevenly polarized skies, try reducing the level of polarization; employ a longer focal length; or if possible adjust your viewpoint. They are also VERY handy for bringing out the colours of rainbows. You don't even have to put the polariser on your lens to see the effect this filter brings, just hold it up to your eye and rotate it Just like wearing polarised sunglasses, it can make landscape scenes look much more impressive.
Polarisers show most effect when the camera is shooting 90 degrees from the sun so the sun is at your right or left, not behind or in front. However don't use it constantly with the assumption that it will always enhance the image. Over-use of a polariser can sometimes have an unnatural effect, particularly when shooting on a very wide lens and the polarisation in the sky changes dramatically across the image. It's important to note that because polarising filters are not clear they look quite dark they do actually cut out the amount of light reaching your camera - but not as dramatically as an ND filter see below.
This means that in order for your camera to create a properly exposed image it will need to compensate a little by either using a lower f-stop larger aperture hole if you're controlling your shutter speed S or Tv mode , or using a slower shutter speed if you're in Aperture mode A or Av. You can help make your shutter speed faster by selecting a higher ISO, enabling you to hand hold your camera.
Regardless though, if the shutter speed becomes too slow to hand-hold for example late afternoon when light is already low , and you still want the effects of the polariser, consider mounting your camera on a tripod. Quick tip: Polarising filters can sometimes be used effectively in situations where most people would overlook their benefit.
For example, they can prove helpful when wanting to reduce glare on overcast days, when photographing after or during rain or when wanting to bring out more colour saturation. They are also handy for reducing the glare on plant leaves - a great tip for photographing in a rainforest - revealing richer, darker greens.
An ND filter held up to a lens, showing the light reduction. Neutral Density ND Filters: Unlike the polarising filter which changes the way the image looks, ND filters aim to remain 'neutral' and simply reduce the overall amount of light coming through the lens. Like dark sunglasses for a camera, by reducing the amount of light coming through the lens, ND filters allow the photographer to purposefully compensate by slowing the shutter speed down and achieving motion blur effects, even in situations of bright light.
When elements in the scene are moving, such as a waterfall, waves, clouds or even people, a range of creative possibilities are opened up. There are a number of ND filters on the market. These numbers signify how much light the filter cuts out. Depending on the situation, these filters can be stacked on top of each other to reduce the light even further.
If shooting on Av aperture mode, the camera will alter its selected shutter speed accordingly, lengthening it as the darker filter is applied. These screw onto the lens but have an adjustable outer ring like the polarising filter design which can be adjusted to darken the filter i. While less accurate than a fixed ND filter, it removes the risk of tunnelling and loss of image quality that can occur when stacking filters. Tunnelling or vignetting, as mentioned earlier, is the problem that occurs with wide angled lenses when the filter starts to become visible in the corners or sides of the final image.
ND filters have limits, particularly in the variable ND filters. When pushed to the extreme in bright light , when the ND filter needs to be exceptionally dark, the resulting image can sometimes become uneven. Occasionally the camera also assumes you're trying to take a dark image and you may have to adjust your exposure compensation a little until you get the settings you're after.
Alternatively you could play around in manual M mode with test shots until you reach an exposure you're happy with. Because everything looks so dark through exceptionally strong ND filters, you may find that a it becomes impossible for your camera to auto-focus AF through it, and b impossible for you to see your composition.
In these cases, it's best to frame up your composition and pre-focus using AF before you put on the ND filter. As you'd be using a tripod anyway with such slow photos, neither the focus nor composition will change. To prevent the lens hunting for focus once the filter is applied, after you've pre-focused with AF it's best to switch your lens to manual focus MF. This will 'lock' your focus. Alternatively, some lenses also have a focus distance scale physically displayed on the lens, allowing you twist the focus ring to approximately the right focus distance.
They are useful for helping you to balance the exposure across an image, particularly when there is a large section either at the top or bottom of the frame that is prone to overexposing. Perhaps the most conventional way to use a GND filter is to help balance a bright sky with a darker foreground.
This even applies for night photography, when shooting the Aurora Borealis , Milky Way or the stars. When shooting at night at a large aperture and higher ISO , you can use a GND filter to block out the sky while you take a long exposure for the foreground.
Then, you can simply remove the GND filter during the last seconds in order to expose for the sky, resulting in a single image without the need for merging two separate exposures to create the same effect.
There are three types of GND filters: soft edge, medium edge and hard edge. While most filter manufacturers produce only soft and hard edge GND filters, more have begun to produce the middle-ground between the two. Of these, the most common GND filters used in landscape photography are the 3-stop and 4-stop soft or medium edge. This is because they have a softer gradient than a hard edge filter, which is more suitable for shooting objects rising above the horizon line in the landscape, including mountains and trees.
Hard edge GND filters are more useful when there is a flat horizon, such as when shooting directly out to sea. Again, some photographers will say that GND filters have become obsolete with newer camera technology. However, others believe it is still essential to have a GND filter or two in your kit. For landscape photography, GND filters are an important accessory that will help you to get creative in-field, particularly if you want to produce certain effects in a single shot with minimal post-processing.
While it is possible to reproduce a GND filter effect using Lightroom , Photoshop or some other type of post-processing software by using the graduated filter tool, the effect that you will achieve may not be the same in terms of quality. Sometimes, it may not seem as realistic as a physical GND filter used in-field. Rather than being darker at the top of the filter and graduating to clear in the bottom half, a reverse GND filter has a gradient extending outwards from the middle of the filter, gradually reducing in darkness as it nears the top of the filter.
As with regular GND filters, reverse GND filters feature a bottom half which is clear, so that light in the foreground will not be restricted from reaching the sensor. This is meant to help you achieve a well-balanced exposure across the entire frame of your image. The reverse GND filter is something that a lot of photographers overlook the need for when first starting out in landscape photography.
However, these are specially-designed filters for shooting in situations when there may be a lot of luminance on the horizon line, such as during sunrises and sunsets. Reverse GND filters are great for bringing back the detail in the horizon during bright lighting situations. You can even stack a reverse GND with a regular GND to darken the sky and draw the eye inwards towards the centre of your shot, while the sun and the horizon line will be properly exposed, retaining all of the lovely details in the distance.
However, using a reverse GND filter is not suitable in all cases. If you have an object that begins below the horizon line and extends above it, such as a lighthouse, an animal, a mountain or a tree, then it will darken the top of the subject but not the bottom.
If applied correctly, it can drastically improve your landscape photography. While it is possible to bracket your images and to process them later on with software in order to achieve a similar effect, reverse GND filters may be more versatile in landscape photography situations when you have something moving below or above the horizon line, such as people, wildlife or birds.
If this appeals to you, then it is worthwhile to carry one of these filters in your camera bag. A circular polariser is a filter that you can use in a variety of different situations. This type of filter only allows light travelling within a single direction to enter the lens, whilst blocking light of other polarisations.
The result is that it will reduce glare and reflections in the landscape, such as water or on rocks. In doing so, the vividness of colours and contrasts in your frame increase. As such, you can use a circular polariser to darken skies, enhance autumn colours and green foliage, as well as to increase the details of clouds. Circular polarisers also allow your camera to see through bodies of water, like lakes, puddles or rock pools, into the depths below.
The result can be highly interesting, making your landscape photos appear to be much more dynamic. Circular polarising filters. Given that circular polarisers reduce the amount of light entering the lens, you can also use them when you want to shoot with a slower shutter speed. For example, shooting with a circular polariser in a situation where there is a waterfall surrounded by lush green forest will really make the colours pop, while creating that silky, dreamy water effect for a look that is truly enchanting.
Using a circular polariser is quite easy — you simply have to screw one on to the front of your lens and rotate it until the polarising effect suits your taste. To disengage the polarising effect, simply rotate it back the other way.
The effect that you can create with a circular polarising filter is one that is unable to be recreated in post-processing or with the use of in-camera apps.
0コメント