Camera Filter Effects
Camera filters are optical tools that affect the amount of light that are allowed to enter the camera's sensor. These optical tools are translucent and transparent in nature. Filter effects play a great role in determining the contrast, sharpness, light intensity and color in the images that you take. Students of photography will vouch for the usefulness and the utility of using camera filters in order to enhance their image quality.
Introduction to Camera Filters
Great pictures are widely believed to be the result of brilliant photography. But this observation is very far from the truth. It is the filter effects that make good pictures great and even ordinary pictures good. The right choice of camera filters is imperative in getting the best out of your images. The brand or the sharpness of the lens plays a very limited role in accentuating the quality of the pictures, and cameras without filters are incomplete tools of photography.
The deeper you delve into the art of photography, you'll realize that for you to achieve that perfect 'natural' look, you need to electronically stimulate and manipulate your pictures using digital camera filters. It may seem like you're generating an artificial image, but this is far from the truth. All the best photographers of the world use digital camera filters and their effects to magnify and highlight the beauty and essence of the images they click.
Many people widely believe that by filtering images you are misrepresenting the way these images look in real life. The fact of the matter is that without filtering the images, you will only see a blurry and warped picture of reality. The process of producing images is secondary when compared to the end result of the images that you can produce. It is the final image that matters the most, and filter effects can greatly uplift the way the photographs turn out. The point is not to replicate nature blindly, it is to be creative in the process and produce a great picture that depicts the natural aesthetics as closely as possible.
Filter Effects in Cameras
In the following table, you can see the different types of camera filters that are available and the effects that each of them produce.
| Type of Filter | Effect | Subject Matter |
| Linear and Circular Polarizers | Reduces glare and improves saturation | Water, sky, foliage (in landscape photography) |
| Neutral Density (ND) | Extends exposure time | Waterfalls and rivers (especially under bright sunlight) |
| Graduated neutral density (GND) | Controls strong light gradients and reduces vignetting | Dramatically lit landscapes |
| UV/Haze | Improves clarity with film and provides lens protection | Any |
| Warming/Cooling | Changes white balance | Landscapes and underwater (with special lighting) |
There are five main camera filters that you can make use of and each one has their own unique peculiarities and produces their own unique effects.
Linear and Circular Polarizers
Polarizing filters come into great use when we are shooting landscape. The amount of reflected light that is allowed to pass through to your camera lens is regulated and reduced by the polarizers. As a result of using these filters, there will be lesser glare and reflections off water surfaces, and the contrast between the land and the sky will also be lesser. By rotating the polarizing filter you can also alter the polarizing effect.
Another factor that affects the polarizing effect in your pictures is the direction your camera is facing, vis-a-vis the position of the sun. If the direction that your camera is facing is perpendicular to the direction of the incoming sunrays, the polarizing effect will be maximum. Be warned though, since the polarizing filters for digital cameras reduce the amount of light reaching the sensors, the risk of the images getting blurred are higher.
Neutral Density (ND) Filters
Unlike the polarizing filters, ND filters uniformly decrease the amount of light that reaches the cameras sensor. These filters come in handy when it is not possible to attain a long exposure time within a range of apertures. As a result of this, these filters are best utilized for shooting images of flowing water or large water bodies in bright sunlight. Since a larger aperture is enabled, the diffraction index gets reduced. This makes it simpler to shoot large water bodies that contain a lot of ripples and minute movements. Extreme light reductions are not good for photography though, so use the ND filter very sparingly.
Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filters
GND filters reduce the amount of light reaching the cameras sensor in a smooth and geometric manner. These are also commonly known as 'split filters'. Landscape photography in dim lighting (during sunrise or sunset) are ideal situations for using the GND filters.
Because of the widespread use of highly advanced digital cameras, the use of GND filters have gone down. Before their emergence, almost every picture of landscape had to be taken with a GND filter attached.
UV and Haze Filters
Haze filters are usually clear and do not produce any lasting effect on the image quality. As a result of this, they are primarily used as a protective layer for the camera lens. These filters also reduce the amount of UV rays reaching the film, and consequently reduce the haze and improve the contrast in the final picture. In the advanced cameras that we use today, the sensors are not very sensitive to UV rays and as a result do not necessarily require this filter. Thus it is simply used as a protective layering to cover the lens.
Keep in mind though that sometimes the haze filters can affect the final quality of the image by increasing the lens flare. This either reduces the contrast in the final image, or even causes a slight color tint to appear in the image. As a remedy to this, keep your UV filter clean, or alternatively, you can even opt for a multicoated UV filter.
Warming and Cooling Filters
These filters alter the white balance that is allowed to reach the sensor of the camera. Their primary use is to either add, correct or remove certain color casts from your images. Again, with the advancement of digital cameras that are available today, these filters have lost most of their usefulness. Most cameras today can automatically adjust the white balance.
Camera filter effects are many, and no matter how further ahead technology may advance, photographers the world over will always find a use for camera filters.
