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?
Color Filters for Astrophotography. All semiconductor sensors in digital cameras produce inherently monochrome images. But some astronomy cameras and all DSLR cameras are engineered to produce color images by using a matrix of red, green, and blue filters, called a Bayer filter, in front of the sensor, along with some clever processing. Colored filters change the hue, correct for color temperature, increase the warmth, and reduce the harshness of bright lights. Protect your camera lenses and improve your photographs with help from B&H Photo and Video's selection of neutral density, protective, and polarizing filters.; Sales & Expert advice 800.606.6969 or 212.444.6615. Example of applied pink, green and dark blue photo filter after processing on this website: This color filter can be applied not only to color photo, but also to black-and-white photography to give a specific color shade. On this site there is still: two tone color filter and manual adjustment of the color balance. The original image is not.
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.
7 Types of Camera Lens Filters
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 lens filter guide, we explain the different types of camera filters and their corresponding effects to help you figure out which ones you need:
UV and Skylight Filters
Protective UV and skylight filters are often used to protect the front element of a lens against moisture, dirt, and scratches, which makes them ideal for shooting in wet, dusty, or muddy environments. In the past, UV filters were also used to prevent the UV light from causing haze and fogginess in older photographic films, which were typically more sensitive to UV rays.
On the other hand, skylight filters are every photographer's best friend when shooting under a clear blue sky. They can reduce the excessive blue cast that often appears in photographs taken outdoors. They can also keep skin tones free of color reflections from objects that are around the subject.
Keep in mind, however, that with a skylight filter as your lens' protection, the image quality of your photos may be compromised as it can intensify lens flares that tend to add a color tint and reduce image contrast.
Most suitable for: All kinds of photography
Polarizing Filters
Polarizing filters, pretty much like sunglasses, add depth to an image by saturating its color and reducing reflections. These filters have a rotating mount that's easy to attach to a lens. Once a polarizing filter is mounted on your lens and the subject is already framed, you can slowly rotate the filter while watching how the image changes on your camera's viewfinder or live view.
Polarizers are best for shooting landscapes. They darken skies and make colors pop, as well as eliminate glare and reduce reflections on glassy or water surfaces.
When photographing landscapes, avoid panning your camera because it can create uneven, dark areas in the sky. Also, you need to be careful when using this filter with an ultra wide-angle lens, as it can also cause the blue color of the sky to look uneven in your photos.
Color Filter Photo Editing
Most suitable for: All kinds of photography
Watch this Adorama TV episode to know more about UV filters and polarizing filters.
Neutral Density Filters
Neutral density (ND) filters are sheets of dark-colored glasses that reduce the amount of light that enters your lens and hits to the sensor, but without affecting the color of the resulting image. This includes excess sunlight and powerful light from studio flashes.
An ND filter doesn't need any adjustment at all, and you can still use the metering and focusing system of your camera and lens even with this filter attached to your lens.
By reducing the intensity of incoming light, this filter allows you to shoot with slower shutter speeds without overexposing your image. In that case, if you're going to take a photo of a moving subject like flowing water, make sure to use a tripod for more dramatic motion blur and to ensure that everything else is tack sharp.
Most suitable for:
- Landscape photography
- Flash photography
- Street photography
- Photographing moving bodies of water like rivers and falls
Graduated Neutral Density Filter
Graduated neutral density filters (also known as ND Grad or GND filters) have a vertical transition between dark and clear to balance the exposure between the sunny sky and its darker foreground. They vary in darkness and are measured in 'stops'—the number of stops of light determines how much it will darken part of the scene you are trying to capture.
Color Filters For Photos
GND filters generally come in three common types: soft-edged, hard-edged, and reverse.
- Hard-Edge GND Filter – Has a neutral gray half that sharply transitions to clear at the center. It is mostly used to balance out high-contrast scenes, such as a flat horizon with bright skies and a dark foreground, to create an evenly exposed image.
- Soft-Edge GND Filter – More commonly preferred for its smoother gradient between the dark and clear areas, this filter is best used if the horizon is not perfectly straight or flat; you can also opt for this if the hard-edge filter tends to create a noticeable midline for your chosen scene.
- Reverse GND Filter – Special filter that landscape photographers use to shoot beautiful sunrises and sunsets when the sun is much closer to the horizon. Unlike regular GND filters that transition from dark to light in the middle, this type changes from dark (for the sky) to darker (for the sun) on the top half and then all clear on the lower half (for the foreground).
Most suitable for:
- Landscape photography
- Shooting during the golden hours: after sunrise and before sunset
Color Correcting Filters
Color correcting filters, also known as cooling and warming, color conversion, or color compensating filters, are used to correct and/or enhance the color of your scene. Warming and cooling filters are great for correcting indoor lighting and making your scene look gloomier or sunnier while other colored filters are great for bringing out certain hues in a scene.
For those who'd rather skip the color correction in post-production, these are helpful in making your images look more beautiful, accurate, and realistic.
Most suitable for: All kinds of photography
Close-Up Filters
Close-up filters (also known as macro filters or diopters) are used to enable macro photography without having to use a dedicated macro lens. Many photographers resort to purchasing these small pieces of glass than invest in more costly macro lenses, especially when they don't necessarily have to take close-up shots all the time.
Then again, these lens filters can't replace the magnifying power of actual macro lenses. Close-up filters are just like reading or magnifying glasses that help regular lenses focus more closely on subjects.
Most suitable for: Macro and still life photography
Special Effects Filters
Special effects filters serve different purposes in improving your images. Perhaps the most popular type of special effects filters is the starburst filter, which effortlessly adds a noticeable twinkle to image highlights and light sources such as street lamps and Christmas lights. You can choose from filters that produce two-, four-, six-, or eight-point stars and light flares.
Other special effects filters include infrared filters, multivision, center spot or diffusion filters, and day for night filters. However, most of these have lost their popularity since their effects can now be easily reproduced in Photoshop. What can't be easily replicated, however, are the unique effects of bokeh filters on out-of-focus blur.
Color Filter For Pictures
Most suitable for: All kinds of photography
Camera Lens Filter Overview
| Lens Filter | Effect | Photography Type |
| UV & Skylight Filter |
| All |
| Polarizing Filter |
| All |
| Neutral Density Filter |
| Landscape and Flash Photography |
| Hard-Edge Graduated ND Filter |
| Landscape Photography |
| Soft-Edge Graduated ND Filter |
| Landscape Photography |
| Reverse Graduated ND Filter |
| Landscape Photography |
| Colored Filter |
| All |
| Close-Up Filter |
| Macro Photography |
| Special Effects Filters |
| All |
Small as they may be, lens filters play a huge role in the outcome of your images. If you like instant results and hate spending time and effort in post-production, using lens filters is the option for you and we hope this lens filter guide was able to help you understand how and when you can use them to improve your photography.
