Off and on, through the years, various ones of us have experimented
with filters to PRE-BALANCE the light prior to digitizing. There
absolutely are advantages to that in some very narrow circumstances.
But with interesting trade-offs. With digital cameras and films that
have more limited dynamic range or where you need to protect the
shadow exposure as much as possible, a bluish CC filter for balancing
indoor lighting is advantageous. This puts the sensor noise more
uniform across the three channels, instead of primarily in the blue
channel. Warming filters can be used for normal outdoor photography,
but generally speaking, I see little DR increase in that regard, but
it does do interesting things for shadow color balance. My issue as to
do with the upper clip-point (saturation) of the sensor. Pre-balancing
can gain you a full stop of highlight recovery.
Do I use pre-balancing filters? No. While I could and probably should,
in some cases, I find the reward to be less than the effort involved.
UV filters. Moose brings up a good point on UV filters. While I don't
totally agree with his assessment, I've certainly seen where UV
sensitivity in digital is greater than the human eye, but I wouldn't
put it above most films. Or maybe he is on to something. Would a UV
filter help de-blue shadows in normal daylight more? That's the one
complaint I have with digital is that the shadows go blue.
I do NOT use "protective filters". The only protection I give them is
a hood and a cap. And I try not to let them hang out unsupervised at
night.
Polarizer filters are an interesting twist. I use them but not nearly
as much as I used to. In fact, I rarely use them these days. Is it
because I can do what I need/want to do in Photoshop instead? Well,
sorta. But this is one of those form/function things. I've been
shooting a lot of panos and wide-angle stuff the past couple of years
and polarizers are just to problematic for ultrawide photography.
B&W "contrast" filters. Non-issue, don't bother. Do your conversion
with NIK. HOWEVER, I would say that I do see a bit of an improvement
if I use a yellow on the lens to help "pre-balance" it a little
better. But it isn't enough of an improvement for me to bother with
the inconvenience.
Life is much better with film. Face it, we're all still film guys
living in the dredges of a digital world.
AG Schnozz
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|