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hey i popped in to a photographic store here in adelaide, was checking out there selection when i came across some filters that made images look really cool, like really strong orange sunsets and such. i walked out the door with a little bit of gear a cokin adapater, filter mount, and 2 filters. orange and a gradual natural grey.

here is the natural grey in the mount on the camera



i did a bit of mucking around with them last night in my backyard.
this one is me lying down shooting at the clouds, the gradual grey filter mix with the cir polarizer really brings out the blue in the sky


and these two are over my back fence using the orange filter.





all images are straight from the camera, just resized in photoshop

down the track i will get a few more, it is great to try new things. i know i can add similar filters on PS, or lightroom. but i want to get the effect on the camera first.

A time honoured technique.
You might want to check out the graduated filters. These allow you to place the effect over only part of the image. Also Graduated ND (grey?) filters allow you to balance exposure if , for example, you have a bright sky but a dark foreground.

One thing to remember though. If you apply these in camera, you have lost colour information. There is no way to get back to natural

thanks for the info mr darcy, i never thought about it like that to balance up a picture. this was just my first attempt at it. i am still exploring the world of photography, and i like to dibble and dabble in a little bit of everything.

The world of filters can give you endless enjoyment.
A couple of other ideas to try:
A dark neutral density filter (e.g. ND8) can give you really long exposures for waterfalls. etc. I once used several stacked to take a 10 minute exposure of a busy freeway in the middle of the day. No cars were visible in the final photo as they were not in frame long enough to show. Won't work on Parramatta Rd in peak hour though
Use a coloured filter on the lens. Use its complementary filter over a flash. The background will be weirdly coloured, but the foreground will look right. To reverse the effect, just take the filter off the camera.

As Greg says, this is a time honoured technique; you are about to start playing in some real fun waters.

And Cokin is a great way to go too; you just need to buy the adapters to fit the different lenses that you have, as and when you acquire new glass.

Try using the orange filter with your camera set to just shoot in B&W mode. Better yet, grab a yellow filter and shoot B&W.

someone on another photography forum said that these filters were a waste of time, and that all of this stuff can be done on the computer,

as mr darcy said, he put the ND filters ontop of each other to take a long exposure shot in daylight. i know that with my cameras and lens capabilitys no matter how small i make the f stops there is no way i can take a long exposed shot during the day.

you cannot replicate grads on PC cos you are effectively altering the dynamic range captured by your camera.

i have a close friend who uses cokin filters and we have tried recreating filter effects in PS. most of the coloured types can be replicated pretty easily but its nowhere near as much fun imo. getting it right "on location" is part, a very LARGE part, of the joy of photography.

auxr8220 wrote:someone on another photography forum said that these filters were a waste of time, and that all of this stuff can be done on the computer,

And I might be tempted to suggest that that's not actually photography, but a post processing technique.

Yes, there's a lot you can do on the computer, but if you can master getting the image that you want, in the camera, that's a lot less time you'll be spending on the computer trying to get the image that you want, as opposed to the time you can spend out in the field, actually taking photographs.

I know what I'd rather be doing.

yeah, that is what i said to him. i would rather get my shots right on the camera first then worry about post processing the images later.

when i have some time i will play around some more, right now trying to get sleep for the last day of clipsal500 is the main thing on my mind.

auxr8220 wrote:someone on another photography forum said that these filters were a waste of time, and that all of this stuff can be done on the computer,

I know this has been more or less covered, but I have to ask the question:
If it takes 10 seconds to put the filter on, as opposed 1 minute applying the filter in PP; just which is the waste of time?

Yes applying the filter in PP has its uses: You don't have the right filter with you in the field or you just didn't think of that particular treatment at the time