Choosing a Camera Lens Filter

Filters are a great way to protection your expensive glass lens. After all, they are an investment. There are filters that offer more than protection and help create some very useful effects for your pictures. Now, you can create some of the effects with your editing software, but it is nice to have the filter right there on your lens when you want to create a specific effect while shooting.

Here are a few of the most popular filters and the effects they will have on your photographs:

Clear Filter

Clear filters are meant to protect your lens and can be left on the lens all the time. These lens do not offer any kind of visual effect to your images.

UV Filter

UV filters absorbs UV light when you take a picture and gives your photographs a warm look while minimizing the hazy look in landscape photos. This is a great filter to use for clean and clear panoramic photos.

Polarizer Filter

The polarizing filter is used for outdoor photography and reduces the reflections on non-metallic surfaces such as glass and water. The circular polarizing filter is my favorite because it has an adjustable ring which allows you to adjust the ring until the sky appears to be the bluest. This filter also increases the contrast between colors.

Skylight Filter

The skylight filter is a basic color correction filter with a slight magenta tint and the effect is slightly warming.

Granted, with the advances in digital photography and editing, the need for a skylight filter is not as necessary, because you can color correct in post production. It is still nice to understand the basics of what filters can do if you have the opportunity to use them. Sometimes, old-school shooting has its benefits.