Filters for Digital Cameras

You still need grad neutral density and polarizers, same as with film explained in paragraphs below. These effects cannot be duplicated electronically. nik multimedia's color efx pro is the best way to simulate these looks if you forgot to use the filter when you made the shot.

You may skip the color conversion filters like 80A, FLD and 85C, since you get these by adjusting the camera's white balance. This is an advantage of digital, since you don't lose the stop or two of light that these filters absorb. Since you are often in dim light when using these filters this is a huge help!

You also can replace mild, fine tuning warming and cooling filters like my favorite 81A by fine tuning the white balance adjustment. Personally I still use an 81A filter all the time on my digital camera lenses so I can swap these to my film cameras without having to twiddle with filters. Otherwise just adjust the fine tunes of your WB presets to get this. Not all cameras can adjust the presets, and now you see why this is so important.

Black-and-White with Digital Cameras

Shoot your B/W images in color and then use Photoshop's channel mixer to convert to B/W. This allows you to choose the exact effect of using a colored filter in front of the lens after you've made the shot. This has many advantages:

1.) You can get any and all possible filter results with only one image.

2.) You can see what you're doing when choosing filter effects much better than while you're out shooting.

3.) You also have a color image for free!

4.) This is the serious one: you can use layers in Photoshop to apply different filters to different parts of the image. The only way to have gotten that with film was to either a.) use a filter taped together like a mosaic in front of the lens (not practical when you realize you also have to mosaic ND filters with them to compensate the different colors) or b.) composite print from several different negatives, again not exactly convenient.

5.) There is no advantage to using a colored filter over the lens of a digital camera when shooting because:

a.) The final images will still be colored. You still have to load them into Photoshop to make then black and white instead of black and red.

b.) It's easier to compose due to the brighter finder.

c.) There's no quality advantage: all digital cameras use color sensors anyway. Actually all color sensors are B/W sensors with RGB filters permanently painted on top of alternating pixels. Kodak made a very special B/W DSLR some years back without the RGB filter atop the sensor, and thus it did give the advantage of higher resolution and speed and you did have to use a color filter in front of the lens. Otherwise there are no B/W digital cameras common today.

6.) The Canon 20D allows you to select color filter effects in camera, which is very handy if you only want B/W. It electronically applies the equivalent of a colored filter over the lens and converts to B/W in-camera. If you intend to spend time editing later you're still better off shooting in color and converting later due to #5 above. The 20D feature retains advantages # 2 and 5 and negates advantages # 1, 3, 4 above.

Filters for Color Film

For color film I use an 81A (Nikon A2 or B+W KR2) filter almost all the time. It warms up the colors just a little bit and gives the look I love.

If the light is very cool or I want a much warmer effect I use a very warm 85C (B+W KR9 or European A9). This filter is almost as strong as the 85A (Nikon A12 or B+W KR12) daylight-to-tungsten conversion filter. I use the 85C a lot to give very warm images. I used it here to get a much warmer effect.

I use a Tiffen 812 if I'm under a tree or otherwise want to trim out a little green (same as adding magenta), in addition to warming a little more than the 81A.

I carry a polarizer, but rarely use it. Polarizers were popular back when people still shot Kodak color film because they could help try to get the colors to saturate on the Kodak films. Now that most people shoot vivid Fuji Velvia the polarizer isn't needed just to get the colors to look the way they should. In fact, a polarizer can turn the sky a yucky black with modern Fuji film. Polarizers are often overkill on color landscapes with modern film.

There are at least two kinds of polarizers. The conventional kind is now called a linear polarizer. It works great with all rangefinder cameras, view cameras and most manual focus cameras. You don't need to know, but they are called "linear" because the light waves coming out the back of them vibrate in one plane in a linear fashion.

Most autofocus cameras use polarization tricks as part of the autofocus system. Therefore if you use a regular linear polarizer you may mess up your focusing and metering. Because of this a new kind of polarizing filter was developed, called a circular polarizer, that eliminates these problems. No, these names have nothing to do with the shape of the filter! Circular polarizers use a trick (a quarter wave retardation plate if you must know) that makes the light waves coming out of the back of the filter spin around in a way called "circular polarization." This means that the light coming out the back of a circular polarizer does not appear polarized to the camera, and therefore it won't confuse anything. Yes, the effect of the two filters is the same on your pictures. The circular polarizer costs more and may be used anyplace you'd use a linear polarizer. You can test your filter by looking through another POL filter (or POL sunglasses) through the back of the filter in question. Rotate the filter in question. If it gets darker and lighter as rotated then it's not circularly polarized. It should always look the same. Turn the filter in question around and look through the front of it as you rotate. It will now go dark and light, confirming that you're running the test correctly.

"Warm" polarizers are simply polarizers with a built-in 81A warming filter. This is because many of us would use both filters at the same time, and when you stack them sometimes you would cut off the edges of the picture from looking through the stack of filters. Also many polarizing filters, even the most exotic and expensive B+Ws, often alter the color balance towards cooler blue, and thus the warming ones often wind up being neutral. I always hand-pick my polarizers for neutrality. I found the cheap off-the-rack linear Tiffens here and the very expensive Nikons here are the best. I found the B+Ws not good. Also the Hoya circular polarizer I have is quite good. Poke around that website to find the sizes you need.

I carry a Tiffen 0.6 graduated neutral density ("Two Stop ND Grad") in a regular circular screw-in mount. "0.6" is the scientific term (D/log10) for "two stops." You can get it here. (Again, poke around that site to find the size you need.) I have no idea why we call them "graduated" filters, as if they have been granted an academic degree, instead of "gradiated" or "gradiented," which would imply that there is a gradient involved as indeed there is. These are clear glass with one half colored a dark gray and a smooth transitional gradient between the two areas. I only use these only in cases of extreme brightness difference between the sky and ground. This also is a filter that destroys your image if used when it shouldn't be. Photo author Tim Fitzharris and sometimes Galen Rowell use a little too much of these filters for my taste because they turn the sky and mountain tops unnaturally dark. I prefer using a weaker grad filter. I find the square filter systems like the Cokin and Singh-ray too bothersome. Avoid the square systems for rangefinder cameras: they cover up parts of the viewfinder and rangefinder windows, and even worse, one cannot view through the lens anyway to take advantage of the additional flexibility of the square systems on a rangefinder camera. The reason for the one-stop filter factor in the tables below for the two-stop grad for use with rangefinder cameras is because the average factor through the whole filter is one stop (no stops at the top and two at the bottom).

I also carry a purple FL-W or FL-D florescent conversion filter. Not only does this try to correct the nasty green cast of florescent lights, but more often I use it to turn an otherwise gray sunset an exciting violet. The photos on my site are of the good sunsets and I didn't use this filter for them. A magenta color conversion filter (CC05M through CC50M) filter also can add a nice magenta to after sunset photos.

Last and least I carry a deep blue 80A filter sometimes to try to remove excessive orange cast from photos made under ordinary household tungsten light on my beloved Velvia. It works poorly: I get a nasty slight green cast. This is God punishing me for photographing with a vivid film like Velvia under ordinary home lighting as opposed to color balanced studio quartz lights. I usually just take off my standard A2 filter and shoot nude under home lighting.

With a digital camera you can do all the warming and cooling and fluorescent conversion with the white balance controls. Therefore the only filters I use with my digital camera are a polarizer and a graduated ND.

How do I determine which filter to use?

This is the most important and difficult part!

The choice of filter outdoors is different for every scene.

You have to see what the scene is, know what you want on film, and the difference between them defines the filter you need. This is the art of interpretation and is central to good photography.

If you are shooting negative color film you can forget about using colored filters as I love. Most efforts you make will be "corrected" when printed, losing all your efforts. That's why people serious about controlling color shoot slides, or have to resort to doing their own printing. All the color photos on this site are from transparencies or slides.

Many people love a polarizer to darken daytime skies into dramatic colors. This usually comes through even on print film.

For black and white you need a yellow filter outdoors. Film is much more sensitive to blue light than our eyes are, so without the yellow filter your skies all get washed out. The yellow filter is the standard required filter, taking it off results in an effect.

At night I usually skip filters. If you are shooting color indoors you will need an FL-D or FL-W (purple) filter to make florescent lights look normal instead of green, and an 80A filter if you want to make tungsten lights less orange.