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Color balance filters any use for digital?
Intothedeepblue
Registered Users Posts: 4 Beginner grinner
I have a few Cokin Xpro color balance filters , warm up; green up etc and some for B&W shots that you would use to darken the sky etc. Is there any use for these whatsoever on a digital body that produces digital images that can be tweaked to my hearts content in Lightroom.
I tried them, obviously give quite a serious color cast to the raw files shot in AW but once you do manual color balance in Lightroom the resulting pic seems to be noticeably cleaner and the color richer looking? Could just be the placebo affect or the natural light on the day not as bad as I reckoned.
Despite the filters not being needed in the digital age they are modifying the light reaching the sensor so in essence they must be affecting the resulting image in some way?
I tried them, obviously give quite a serious color cast to the raw files shot in AW but once you do manual color balance in Lightroom the resulting pic seems to be noticeably cleaner and the color richer looking? Could just be the placebo affect or the natural light on the day not as bad as I reckoned.
Despite the filters not being needed in the digital age they are modifying the light reaching the sensor so in essence they must be affecting the resulting image in some way?
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Comments
There are some who also prefer a "Moose Peterson Warming Circular Polarizer" which adds a warming filter to the polarizer.
Some folks have also found use for Graduated Neutral Density filters and digital photography, especially where the dynamic range varies greatly across a horizon.
If you have a deep/dark Neutral Density filter, it can be used to extend the shutter duration, blurring moving subjects and moving water, for instance
If you already have the filters, feel free to experiment and share the results. For B&W photography you may very well find uses for the filters, but those uses will be scene and subject dependent. (A typical B&W use might be to either balance or exaggerate B&W tonal differences in a colored scene or colored subject matter, to either promote or demote the scene or subject matter in a scene. The choice of film or digital capture may, or may not, further impact the resulting processed image, depending on the amount of additional post-processing added to either system.)
Some links to explore:
CAMERA POLARIZING FILTERS
GRADUATED NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTERS
NEUTRAL DENSITY FILTERS
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