As a budding or aspiring photographer, you’ve likely seen or even used camera lens filters before. Photographers use these little pieces of glass for a multitude of reasons, but the most common is for managing tricky lighting conditions when shooting.
Filters help minimize glare and reflections, enhance colors, reduce light coming into the lens, and more. Each lens filter serves a specific purpose, as each one is built to deliver a specific effect that can help enhance the final look of an image.
How are Camera Lens Filters Used in Photography?
They Protect Your Lens
The most affordable types of lens filters are those that are clear and simply used for protection. These are great for protecting the front lens element during normal shooting situations, as the clear glass does not affect your images in any way. Protective lens filters eliminate the possibility of scratches, cracks, and dust accumulating on the surface of your lens.
They Can Correct or Enhance Colors
There are certain types of photography filters that can alter or boost the colors in your images. Some have the ability to correct the color temperature of a scene, while others can enhance color and contrast for a more vibrant image.
They Help Ensure Accurate Exposure
When working with particularly difficult lighting conditions, filters are a great option for achieving even and accurate exposure across your entire image. They do this by blocking some of the light that enters the lens (in varying degrees). These are particularly helpful when shooting outdoors during daytime, particularly when using fast shutter speeds may not be enough to avoid overexposure.
They Add Impact to Your Images
Camera filters can help improve your images in various ways—they’re useful for increasing contrast in an image, creating more vivid colors, eliminating glare and distracting reflections from water and glassy surfaces, and more. But they can also be used to add a little oomph to an otherwise lackluster shot by adding some interesting effects, like multi-point “stars” on light sources or softened edges.
Different Kinds of Lens Filters
1. Screw-On Filters
Also called a circular filter, this is any lens filter that is directly mounted and screwed onto the front of a lens. There are different camera filters that fall under this category, including the most commonly used ones like polarizers, ND filters, and color filters. They usually vary in diameter or thickness, and the thickest ones can sometimes produce vignetting in your images.
2. Drop-in Filters
Drop-in filters are used primarily with telephoto lenses, as they often have larger front elements and cannot always be used with a standard screw-on filter. As its name suggests, a drop-in filter is inserted into a small, specialized compartment near the rear part of the lens.
3. Square Filters
These filters are normally used with a lens filter holder that is attached to the front of the lens. You’ll only need to get adapters for your lens filter holder in order to be able to use one or more filters of different sizes. This type of filter is popularly used for landscape photography.
4. Rectangular Filters
Another popular choice for landscape photographers is rectangular filters, which are also mounted with a filter holder. Using a rectangular filter gives the photographer more space to move around the subject without risking uneven spots. Its most popular size is 4×6, but there are smaller and larger filters available as well.
Filters are relatively inexpensive as far as camera gear goes, but if you don’t know the right ones to buy for your own needs or how you can use them to improve your photos, you may just end up wasting your money.
In the following blogs, we'll explain the different types of camera filters and their corresponding effects to help you figure out which ones you need.
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PS: Text content is quoted from Adorama's 42West.
Any questions about this blog or filters, you can email to shirley@giaitech.com
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