Filters Upfront or Software Afterwards?

Tom Potter

A couple of questions, please. This is one of those much-debated questions out there in photo land.....Are youmof the school of
Thought of using lens filters in an attempt to get the picture as close to correct exposure at the time of snapping the shutter, OR, of
The school of thought of - at least in part, with the thinking that less glass between lens and subject is always better - that one should
NOT use lens filters, but rather, make any necessary corrections in a software application afterwards?
Personally, I prefer to NOT use lens filters, with the interest of getting the best quality shot possible - keeping any unnecessary glass off
The lens. At the same time, I am a photographer, NOT a software guru, so, I prefer to spend as LITTLE TIME POSSIBLE in front of a my laptop
Screen, having to play "Mr Photo Lab Guy". So, in conclusion, for me, I'd say I would use a lens filter if it would cut down the time I'd have to
Spend in front of a PC.
Also, what made me think of this question, is that I shot some pics in Rocky Mountain National Park this weekend. I was at 14,000'., and there
Are still a few patches of snow. At high altitude, things take on a blue cast. I've used an 81A filter with my film camera years ago.
Do you recommend I still use this filter with my Nikon D300? If you suggest adjusting the blue out afterwards, would you just ease out
The blue color in programs such as LightRoom?
Thank you SO much for your time and assistance with this.

Tom

pwp

Hi, Tom. I'm also of the opinion that the less glass added to the lens, the better. (I make the occasional exception for an ND grad or polarizer when I really need them. I also tend to keep a UV filter on my portrait/wedding lenses at all times.) I just feel like more glass adds more chance for distortion and more opportunity for dust to stick to something.

Anyway, in regards to your question about the blue cast, personally I would shoot in RAW (of course) and correct any remaining WB or cast issues in PS ACR. A good curves adjustment would work, too, and lessens your risk of "over-warming".

InsuredDisaster

My D300 has white balance controls on camera. I can adjust all of that right there. I'm not sure why I'd want or need a warming filter on a digital camera. Film yes, but not digital.

And like pwp, shoot RAW and you can do whatever you want to with the color cast later.


I'm not sure I'd say less glass is better, but I think digital in general has pushed filters pretty far out of the picture, no pun intended. ND's and polarizers, I use, and use them with frequency. You just can't do the same in CS later. However, I see these special effects filters, the foggers, soft focusing filers, the glowing filters, multiple picture filters, and all those trick things.


My question is why even consider putting trick shot filters on digital cameras? Just like digital gives you the option of BW or color for every shot you take (subject to certain limitations perhaps) with CS you can do all the soft focusing filters and all that stuff later. You don't "ruin" a perfectly good shot if the filter or trick isn't quite like you had in mind, and later you can go back and change it to a new trick or "filter" if you see something cool.

I'd think that with the exception of ND's and polarizers, you might save weight and time by leaving all the other filters behind. Especially warming filters and other color correcting filters. I might be wrong with this thinking though. But that's my school of thought. Not everyone gains admission.

Tom Potter

Thanks guys, for your input. Like you , I use those filters as well - specifically, the Singh-Ray graduated neutral density filters and their gold / blue polarizer. LOVE 'em! So, I wanted to get the input of some other folks.

InsuredDisaster, when you say you adjust it on the D300 (which, again, I have), do I presume correctly, that you manually adjust the color temp on the camera, for my specific example, so that it will not record blue at high altitude?

InsuredDisaster wrote:

My D300 has white balance controls on camera. I can adjust all of that right there. I'm not sure why I'd want or need a warming filter on a digital camera. Film yes, but not digital.

And like pwp, shoot RAW and you can do whatever you want to with the color cast later.


I'm not sure I'd say less glass is better, but I think digital in general has pushed filters pretty far out of the picture, no pun intended. ND's and polarizers, I use, and use them with frequency. You just can't do the same in CS later. However, I see these special effects filters, the foggers, soft focusing filers, the glowing filters, multiple picture filters, and all those trick things.


My question is why even consider putting trick shot filters on digital cameras? Just like digital gives you the option of BW or color for every shot you take (subject to certain limitations perhaps) with CS you can do all the soft focusing filters and all that stuff later. You don't "ruin" a perfectly good shot if the filter or trick isn't quite like you had in mind, and later you can go back and change it to a new trick or "filter" if you see something cool.

I'd think that with the exception of ND's and polarizers, you might save weight and time by leaving all the other filters behind. Especially warming filters and other color correcting filters. I might be wrong with this thinking though. But that's my school of thought. Not everyone gains admission.

InsuredDisaster

Well I use RAW and lightroom, so in theory, you can do whatever you want with color.

I've shot at night where I adjusted the color balance on camera as far as it would go, and things were still a bit blue, so Lightroom took care of the rest as I think their white balance can be taken a bit more to the extreme. What I might try if I were you, is either use AWB or a grey card with the user preset option, or the K temperature setting and go from there. If you run out of WB compensation, then you might have to had to PP. I don't normally use the other presets as the above methods work so well for me

I've shot a bit over 10,000 and I had no problems with AWB. I'm not sure what 14,000 looks like, but surely it can't be that much difference?

That being said, I have used lightroom to dial down the red saturation when I was taking pictures of someone who always came out really red in photos, no matter what camera or WB settings were used. He had a red face most of the time, but on camera, it looked even worse. You might try the same too.

Tom Potter

I too, use Lightroom. Generally, what I've been doing, is metering off a blue sky for my outside shots. However, soon, next day or two I will order the WhiBal card to use as my "gray card".

Appreciate the help & tips!

InsuredDisaster wrote:

Well I use RAW and lightroom, so in theory, you can do whatever you want with color.

I've shot at night where I adjusted the color balance on camera as far as it would go, and things were still a bit blue, so Lightroom took care of the rest as I think their white balance can be taken a bit more to the extreme. What I might try if I were you, is either use AWB or a grey card with the user preset option, or the K temperature setting and go from there. If you run out of WB compensation, then you might have to had to PP. I don't normally use the other presets as the above methods work so well for me

I've shot a bit over 10,000 and I had no problems with AWB. I'm not sure what 14,000 looks like, but surely it can't be that much difference?

That being said, I have used lightroom to dial down the red saturation when I was taking pictures of someone who always came out really red in photos, no matter what camera or WB settings were used. He had a red face most of the time, but on camera, it looked even worse. You might try the same too.

InsuredDisaster

Tom Potter wrote:

I too, use Lightroom. Generally, what I've been doing, is metering off a blue sky for my outside shots. However, soon, next day or two I will order the WhiBal card to use as my "gray card".

Appreciate the help & tips!

Do you mean usig the blue sky for your white balance? I ran into some guys who were doing that with their video camera, and I tried it but got very warm colors (as I expected.) Turns out, they wanted warm colors so the sky works very well. But for me, I find that the sidewalk gives a better white balance than the sky.

pathfinder

I think it is rather hard to do a good polarizing filter in software.

And while it is possible to blend two exposures, graduated neutral density filters are still rather handy, especially ones like a Benson reverse neutral gradient.

You cannot do a software equivalent with a 10x neutral density filter either.

So while I am a big fan of software editing of images, filters still have a lot of uses for me.

Trevlan

pathfinder wrote:

I think it is rather hard to do a good polarizing filter in software.

And while it is possible to blend two exposures, graduated neutral density filters are still rather handy, especially ones like a Benson reverse neutral gradient.

You cannot do a software equivalent with a 10x neutral density filter either.

So while I am a big fan of software editing of images, filters still have a lot of uses for me.

I agree with PF on this fully.

Sometimes it's easier to make it work in post. But some filters have effects that post production can't reproduce. I'll go with the 80/20 apporace, maximum output minimum effort. Go with what works best in the given situation.