Filters - just wondering

No disrespect D G Photo training but it was a question which appears you disagree with and it has turned into a debate ! which I didn't intend :(

I too am a pro photographer, and Journalist (NUJ), and have been into photography for 50 years but that makes me even more professionally cautious when responding to posts, especially also with Aspergers I know how easily I can cause upset.

Just remember NO ONE is wrong. You may shoot 10,000 shots and merge them or take one with a big stopper, that does not make what you are doing any more right than people who do things differently

I am 100% sure even you use filters even if only occasionally a polariser :)

Can anyone advertise here ?
 
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Can I please thank EVERYONE for the time they have taken to kindly reply, and to the FILM users who are most interesting

Thank you
 
NANOBYTES............................. Great images

I am a sports photographer, finally going to go into Landscape, sports is dead easy (for mr anyway) I have never liked Landscape or Portraits, as I am not artistic, you really are
 
NANOBYTES............................. Great images

I am a sports photographer, finally going to go into Landscape, sports is dead easy (for mr anyway) I have never liked Landscape or Portraits, as I am not artistic, you really are

thank you for the compliment :)

funny should mention sports. I was recently at an event at Goodwood shooting motorsports and a model for the first time.
I used ND filter to get the shutter speed down for learning panning

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and ND filter to shoot models wide open with 85mm f1.4
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Good luck merging shots in post for these ;)
filters are useful :)
 
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Well back to the original Question, do people still use filters? well I used to use them a lot but now I only use a polariser because as far as I know that is the only one you can't replicate in post.
 
If you don't use grad filters, please no arguments just a question, how do you darken a blown sky, you can't add detail in post processing that isn't there no matter how good you are.

On another point, personal taste, and mine I am sorry, hate tattoos especially on women
 
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If you don't use grad filters, please no arguments just a question, how do you darken a blown sky, you can't add detail in post processing that isn't there no matter how good you are.

On another point, personal taste, and mine I am sorry, hate tattoos especially on women

I don't use grads and two ways around it. Pull the shadows in post most (sony) sensors have enough dynamic range for this these days. Alternatively blend in post from exposure bracketed shots i.e. like HDR merges.

As for the last point I didn't have to marry her, just needed learn shooting with model. For that she was great and cheerful. So i need not make other judgements on people's choice that doesn't effect me personally :)
 
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If you don't use grad filters, please no arguments just a question, how do you darken a blown sky, you can't add detail in post processing that isn't there no matter how good you are.

On another point, personal taste, and mine I am sorry, hate tattoos especially on women
Lightroom has a pretty effective grad filter.
 
Do people still use filters now

Am I alone in using my Lee 150 system

Thanks

Yes, most of the time I will be using either a polariser, ND filter or grad (or a combination of them). Sometimes grads aren't as effective as exposure blending so I also do that where necessary. I can't believe people are debating which method of LE is quickest best, there's no right or wrong, just do what works for you. Actually I can believe it :rolleyes: :D

I use the Lee100 system but I'm sure you're not alone ;)
 
Yes, most of the time I will be using either a polariser, ND filter or grad (or a combination of them). Sometimes grads aren't as effective as exposure blending so I also do that where necessary. I can't believe people are debating which method of LE is quickest best, there's no right or wrong, just do what works for you. Actually I can believe it :rolleyes: :D

I use the Lee100 system but I'm sure you're not alone ;)


A1 thanks
 
IF you have/use lightroom, I don't any more

I stopped using it for a while, but couldn't get on with any of the alternatives I tried, so I went back to it ,
I'm sorry I can't help you with other software.
 
I stopped using it for a while, but couldn't get on with any of the alternatives I tried, so I went back to it ,
I'm sorry I can't help you with other software.

Oh I am happy with the software I have, I may go back to Adobe it is cheap enough, mainy Video at the moment
 
If you don't use grad filters, please no arguments just a question, how do you darken a blown sky, you can't add detail in post processing that isn't there no matter how good you are.

As others like to point out, there are 2 parts to image creation: capture and processing.

There's no way to recover a blown sky, other than replacement, therefore you have to be sure that any detail you want is available in the files. If you've made multiple bracketed exposures then replacement is a possibility, as is blending exposures in order to retain maximum tonal range in all parts of the image for a high dynaic range image.

The other alternative, now readily possible with modern sensors that have a wide DR is to expose to retain detail in the sky, then bring up the shadow parts of the image. Most image processing software has controls for highlights and shadows as well as contrast and exposure as I'm sure you know as a professional photographer, and that can be used for recovering detail that's present in highlights and shadows. I would normally apply tonal control in post processing, whether that's with grads or painting in highlight reduction etc.

I don't know what software you use and what filters you have bought, but I would find spending £100 on powerful and effective image processing software to be much better value than spending £100 on various filters in terms of the quality of images I should expect to produce afterwards. There are lots of options outside of Lightroom if you don't like the rental model, as I don't.

Hope that's useful.
 
No disrespect D G Photo training but it was a question which appears you disagree with and it has turned into a debate ! which I didn't intend :(

I too am a pro photographer, and Journalist (NUJ), and have been into photography for 50 years but that makes me even more professionally cautious when responding to posts, especially also with Aspergers I know how easily I can cause upset.

Just remember NO ONE is wrong. You may shoot 10,000 shots and merge them or take one with a big stopper, that does not make what you are doing any more right than people who do things differently

I am 100% sure even you use filters even if only occasionally a polariser :)

Can anyone advertise here ?


No disrespect read or given - but

I did clearly answer your 3 queries, others took my comments off-track into a debate I didn't intend either and which I tried to stop, which others ignored

I didn't say anyone was wrong in using filters or not, only that I find them a waste of time & money and that there had been an incorrect assumption of how 'simulated long-exposure' photography works, so the idea of needing 1,000+ of photos wasn't correct, and I then explained why to finally end the debate - which it did

And since I clearly stated I DO NOT use filters I can't for the life of me think why you chose to say that you're 100% sure I do - I haven't owned a polarising filter in well over 10 years or so - and even then I gave it away as I hadn't used it for several years before that

As to your final question then (within reason & decency lol), yes anyone can advertise on TP - you MUST first contact admin and outline what you'd like to do and I'm sure they will accept/reject and give you a price too if accepted; good luck with whatever it is you have in mind :)

Dave
 
Can anyone advertise here ?


As Dave said, yes they can. Use the "Contact us" button near the bottom of the page, unless @Marcel or similar sees this and gets in touch with you.
 
Lightroom has a pretty effective grad filter.

It does, but once any part of the image has gone 'above full scale' and into digital clipping you've lost detail that you can't get back. There's no 'whiter than white' in the digital world, so adding a Lightroom grad filter only really works if you didn't blow out the whites in the first place, IMO.
 
I don't know what software you use and what filters you have bought, but I would find spending £100 on powerful and effective image processing software to be much better value than spending £100 on various filters in terms of the quality of images I should expect to produce afterwards. There are lots of options outside of Lightroom if you don't like the rental model, as I don't.

Hope that's useful.

But that is missing the point to some extent, there are photographers out there such as J Cornish, Charlie Waite, Colin Prior who use filters, are they also wrong, not wanting to turn this in to an argument, but it is also personal preference, some shots need filters if only Polar.

Also you can not quantify the like of using filters with the cost of software, any more than you can never say people should stop using film as the ost is stupid compared to digital these days
It does, but once any part of the image has gone 'above full scale' and into digital clipping you've lost detail that you can't get back. There's no 'whiter than white' in the digital world, so adding a Lightroom grad filter only really works if you didn't blow out the whites in the first place, IMO.



THANK YOU

.
 
In answer to the OP, yes.

I use yellow/red/orange filters regularly in B&W. IR filters for... IR... ND filters for when I want to open the aperture in bright conditions, or want a long exposure. Grads for... appropriate grad situations... In almost all cases, there is an electronic solution, but it's much more costly with film but mainly I hate spending time in Lightroom (probably as much as someone else hates spending time faffing with filters.)
 
Do people still use filters now

Or is it a lost art

Am I alone in using my Lee 150 system

Thanks

No. You are far from alone.

I use Lee Soft Edged graduated ND filters and in my workshops I teach others how to use them. I would not be without them for a lot of my landscapes. I have the SW150 system for my 14-24 and a set of 100mm for my other lenses.
 
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If you don't use grad filters, please no arguments just a question, how do you darken a blown sky, you can't add detail in post processing that isn't there no matter how good you are.

Two ways - one way is to expose for the highlights and bring out the foreground detail in post. If all the scene can fit within the histogram this is viable. The other way is to blend an exposure of the sky and and an exposure of the land in post - or HDR. I find that a faff and a soft edged does the job for the type of pictures I take. A hard can leave a filter line. A soft filter on a full frame camera doesn't. It gives a clean result and you cannot tell where in my pictures the filter went. The trick to filters is for the trained, and untrained eye - being unable to tell that you use filters.

On another point, personal taste, and mine I am sorry, hate tattoos especially on women

So do I ;)
 
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It does, but once any part of the image has gone 'above full scale' and into digital clipping you've lost detail that you can't get back. There's no 'whiter than white' in the digital world, so adding a Lightroom grad filter only really works if you didn't blow out the whites in the first place, IMO.
I did not suggest it could give you detail where there is none to start with.
 
It is when one more of it than brain cells. Too bad they can't use the excess to buy some brain cells ;)

Or maybe a set of filters to make exposure and/or post production quicker and easier :)

Honestly you can have enough money to have a good life but more of it buys nicer things and who wouldn't want nicer things.
 
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Or maybe a set of filters to make post production quicker and easier :)

Honestly you can have enough money to have a good life but more of it buys nicer things and who wouldn't want nicer things.
Depends at what cost :)

I could easily earn more than I do now doing a different kind of job but at the cost of time with my family and also hobby. What good is having the best camera if you can't use it? ;)
If one can have both then of course I'd like that too :D
 
But that is missing the point to some extent, there are photographers out there such as J Cornish, Charlie Waite, Colin Prior who use filters, are they also wrong, not wanting to turn this in to an argument, but it is also personal preference, some shots need filters if only Polar.

I've not suggested no filters should be used, but I HAVE suggested some types are no longer good enough, and there are better methods. Sure lots of people - even guys at the very top of the game that you mention - use filters, most likely because that's what they've always done and it gves them predictable results. But I've also seen plenty of otherwise nice shots here spoiled by the crude use of a grad filter darkening inappropriate parts of the image. Some don't care about that, just like some people completely fail to see processing halos around high contrast objects, but it's still ugly, crude and poor working practice.

As Steve said above "The trick to filters is for the trained, and untrained eye - being unable to tell that you use filters." As soon as that is no longer true then, for me, the photograph is a failure.

Also you can not quantify the like of using filters with the cost of software, any more than you can never say people should stop using film as the ost is stupid compared to digital these days

Actually, yes I can. Filters were originally created to manipulate the way light was perceived in the final image. Software is designed to manipulate the way light is perceived in the final image. I would agree that there s a different sensibility about software, but it's just another tool for the job.
 
In answer to the OP, yes.

I use yellow/red/orange filters regularly in B&W.

As above; but I also find green very useful, and carry two different ones with me.
 
Yes, people still use them. Most people in fact.
Every landscape photographer I know uses filters, and I know a fair few.

So I’d argue most do.
Ahh... your first statement assumes your 2nd statement is the norm. I almost never shoot landscapes - and almost never use filters (though there's no correlation between my filter use and my landscapes)

Just remember NO ONE is wrong.
Except if we shoot in AV
But that is missing the point to some extent, there are photographers out there such as J Cornish, Charlie Waite, Colin Prior who use filters, are they also wrong, not wanting to turn this in to an argument, but it is also personal preference, some shots need filters if only Polar.

I have no desire to shoot like any of those people- why is what they do relevant?
 
Filters are to photography what effects pedals are to guitar playing. No substitiute for talent. :exit:
No substitute for talent, but in the hands of (OK, at the feet of, then!) the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, et al, they contributed to some of the most amazing musical performances people had ever heard.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY
 
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My full spectrum converted cameras just don't work well without a filter, most of the old coloured filters for B&W work well, then of course there's the standard IR filters & sometimes a UV/IR cut to get normal images too. As the IR component shows in all three channels together with the appropriate parts of the visual image it's often impossible to replicate the affects I get from the filters with post processing.

Even on my normal cameras polarizers (both linear & circular), diffusers, soft spots, extreme density filters... get used sometimes - I've even played with multi-image & home-made filters.

About the only ones I don't use are colour correcting ones, but I suppose I could find a use for them too if I put one on the flash & the opposite on the lens (not something I've played with).
 
No substitute for talent, but in the hands of (OK, at the feet of, then!) the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, et al, they contributed to some of the most amazing musical performances people had ever heard.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY

TBH pedals aren't about talent or not. Want to get the right sound for Bryan Adams Run To You? Then you need a chorus, delay and overdrive + a strat. Want to cop Dave Gilmour's solo tone? Big Muff & delay with a strat. Early Mark Knopfler Dire Straits? Strat + compressor and overdrive. Billy Gibbons works the other way round, so that every guitar he plays sounds the same, whether it's a semi-hollow Gretsch or Pearly Gates. I could write quite a bit about The Tone Search, and know that I like playing clean through single ended class A, overdriven through push-pull class AB amps and alnico speakers best. I also really like a cascode preamp for sparkly clean sounds.

Pedals are much more like post-processing, but doing your development in front of the viewer, and playing with a wah is a bit like ICM.

Anybody want to buy a bunch of pedals? I need a clearout. ;)
 
TBH pedals aren't about talent or not. Want to get the right sound for Bryan Adams Run To You? Then you need a chorus, delay and overdrive + a strat. Want to cop Dave Gilmour's solo tone? Big Muff & delay with a strat. Early Mark Knopfler Dire Straits? Strat + compressor and overdrive. Billy Gibbons works the other way round, so that every guitar he plays sounds the same, whether it's a semi-hollow Gretsch or Pearly Gates. I could write quite a bit about The Tone Search, and know that I like playing clean through single ended class A, overdriven through push-pull class AB amps and alnico speakers best. I also really like a cascode preamp for sparkly clean sounds.

Pedals are much more like post-processing, but doing your development in front of the viewer, and playing with a wah is a bit like ICM.

Anybody want to buy a bunch of pedals? I need a clearout. ;)
If I wanted to get the right sound for Bryan Adams Run To You then I'd get Bryan Adams.... and I think that's the point, filters can turn into something of a pretty dire tribute act, particularly if people are led to believe they need to use them before they have mastered playing 'clean'.
 
If I wanted to get the right sound for Bryan Adams Run To You then I'd get Bryan Adams.... and I think that's the point, filters can turn into something of a pretty dire tribute act, particularly if people are led to believe they need to use them before they have mastered playing 'clean'.

Actually you'd need to get Keith Scott, who wrote and played played the original backing tracks, if your requirement for detail is that precise.

If you really care about it then this might be interesting:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4AmmJDDcVU


The dire tribute thing is one of the reasons I stopped playing in a covers band - I felt like it was seldom 'good enough' and sometimes it wasn't good at all. Apart from the fingers not keeping up anymore, I play best when I make the song mine, and that's the antithesis of covers.
 
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Snip:
I play best when I make the song mine
That approach worked well enough for Jimi on All Along the Watchtower. :) I think that's an important point for any art medium, by all means be influenced by the work of others, but remain yourself in what you do.
 
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That approach worked well enough for Jimi on All Along the Watchtower. :) I think that's an important point for any art medium, by all means be influenced by the work of others, but remain yourself in what you do.

Yes, he did, and everyone who went to see him didn't mind, including Bob Dylan. :)

However I'm reminded of a quote from a music magazine I read somewhere along the way about it all be very well being an originals band hawking your collection of edgy fresh tunes that broke new musical ground and would revolutionise their listeners world, but the punters down at the dog and duck just want Rockin' All Over The World on a Saturday night.

Pass me the HDR filter - I can feel a Facebook post coming on. ;)
 
However I'm reminded of a quote from a music magazine I read somewhere along the way about it all be very well being an originals band hawking your collection of edgy fresh tunes that broke new musical ground and would revolutionise their listeners world, but the punters down at the dog and duck just want Rockin' All Over The World on a Saturday night.

Well, never mind, I suppose some covers aren't so bad. Now where did I put that deep blue grad.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEC-12ltNbY
 
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