Filter Brand Recommendations and Questions

ontherivet

I'm using a recently purchased Canon 450D (sounds better than XSi) with the kit 18-55 and the 55-250 telephoto. Trying to get my feet wet...

Anyway, I live in Colorado and shoot mostly outdoors, in the snow, on rivers, in the woods, etc. From a budget perspective, I hope something the in the $50/$60 range per filter can get it done...I don't want to use a crap filter, but don't want to overspend either given my setup.

So here are my questions:

Brands? Any to target or avoid? Hard to tell value/quality just by price and I don't have the opportunity to test. I hear good things about B&W, some of the Hoyas should be avoided others are ok, etc. not sure where to put my money.

Types? I definately need a CP. Not sure about UV, are folks using them as protection, using a clear filter or just leaving the lense bare? ND...I probably need to shoot with the camera a bit more to figure out what I need here but any thoughts would be appreciated.

Also, since both of these lenses rotate when they focus are there any tricks to using a CP filter effectively in this situation?

Thanks!

ziggy53

Heliopan and B+W are brands that you can rely on. Stay away from Tiffen. Some of the Hoya multicoated have tested OK for my use.

I always do some tests of my own to determine the impact of filters on the image during different situations and the results can be interesting in that some lenses are somewhat more sensitive to the type of filter while others are not. I know the situations where filters will cause problems for me.

I do use UV/protective filters on my best lenses to protect the front element from unnecessary cleaning, but I remove the filters if I suspect they will have a significant negative impact, i.e. in strong cross lighting or extreme contrast.

cjmchch

ziggy53 wrote:

Heliopan and B+W are brands that you can rely on. Stay away from Tiffen. Some of the Hoya multicoated have tested OK for my use.

I always do some tests of my own to determine the impact of filters on the image during different situations and the results can be interesting in that some lenses are somewhat more sensitive to the type of filter while others are not. I know the situations where filters will cause problems for me.

I do use UV/protective filters on my best lenses to protect the front element from unnecessary cleaning, but I remove the filters if I suspect they will have a significant negative impact, i.e. in strong cross lighting or extreme contrast.

I have just purchased the Hoya Pro1D Multi Coated Cp and am very pleased with it, so much so that I have just order the Hoya Pro1D ND8 filter and a ND400 as well.

jforbes

IMO, Hoya's multicoated filters are fine. Tiffens are cheap. If you want to try a new kind of filter and don't want to pay a lot, give it a whirl, but they aren't coated which can cause issues.

On an ND filter, there are several potentially important uses for them:

1) Landscape/architecture
For landscapes, if there's a fair amount of light out and you want to have nice blurry flowing water, an ND filter is a must. Instead of stopping down to ridiculous apertures like f/32 and getting no sharpness, you can get a strong ND filter and happily shoot at a much larger f/8 or f/11 and get beautiful flowing water and sharpness. Long shutter speeds can of course also be used to give everything a sensation of motion, if, say, you wanted to shoot a field of wheat on a very windy day and wanted something more abstract.

2) Portraits, outside - If it's bright outside, you won't be able to shoot at very large apertures, as flashes will be stuck in high speed sync mode and you will need to use a smaller aperture for a slower shutter speed to be able to get the shot without blowing the whole scene out. An NDF for portraits will allow you to shoot at large apertures for a narrow depth of field.

3) Architecture: That building has a mob of people walking by it, and you don't want them there. Solution!

Use a very strong ND filter, and a very, very long exposure. ND filters block as much as .999999% of the light. A 10 minute exposure in broad daylight is possible.


Graduated ND filters are dark on one side, light on the other, so you can shoot, say, a landscape with a very bright sky, and not have the sky blow out completely. You can just get round ones that spin, but they limit composition somewhat, or you can get a Cokin system, which lets you manipulate where the line of exposure change is.

See here:
http://www.cokin.com/filtres2.html

lightyear

Always get high quality solid glass (except for polarizers which must have a plastic 'grid' between the front/rear glass pieces)coated filters, which automatically excludes Tiffen, which are made as a sandwich: glass front, glass rear, dyed plastic film in between to achieve the effect . If you get Hoya, buy those made in Japan, not the Phillipines; Heliopan, B+W,Canon, Nikon, are all well made. Many of the manufacturers had (may still have)free brochures listing their filters and showing the individual filter effects. You might consider step-rings. YOu can buy a filter size for your largest lens, and then step-rings for the others(mounting the same filter on different lenses is much less costly, but somewhat inconvenient). There are several books on the subject, and I like the one by Joseph Meehan, who covers just about everything .
Stan

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