Searching for Filters - (part of assignment 205).

Perhaps with landscape photography more than any other subject, knowing when to use the appropriate filter can turn a good image into a fantastic one and there are many of suitable filters to choose from.

Last year I bought filter kit with 23 different filters, which now I consider was a bad choice. 

The kit contain -

• Macro Lens kit (4 Lenses): +1, +2, +4, +10D Macro.
• Diffusion Effect (5 Filters): Duto, Diffuser, Softone, Sand, Soft effect.
• Image enhancing (8 Filters): Sepia, ND, Veri-Cross, Rainbow 8x, Two Field lens, Multi Image Lens, Multi Image filter, LP
• Color Filter Kit (5 Filters): Red, Yellow, Green, Orange, Blue
• Lens Safety (1 Filter): For protection of epensive lens fronts. 

I am very disappointed, it won’t turned out how I vas expected….if the colour filters is useful more or less for black&white photography, rest of it is very poor quality…when I read the description that looked very impressive to me, but now when I had to chance really try it in a practise – filters just doesn’t work as they should, and I really don’t have any dissent image to show….For example using ND you know – no any landscape photographer won’t leave a house without it. Natural Density graduate filter, helps bring out all beauty of the sky, leaving foreground unaffected and it is very important for many photographers who want to get the best possible results and so as I.

I can show you some examples from my images…how is shouldn’t be…and after will provide you with some of my research ones, which are completely shoving different picture…

As you can see image Nr.1 is taking without any filters ISO 100, WB Auto…in the mid-morning, image Nr.2  is taken with my ND filter, it’s done nothing much with a sky, looks like it more turned everything green. Look at the grass-If I have to be honest I really prefer image on the left with more realistic colors.

Same I had to say about these two below...I went out-was not quite nice day; there were clouds everywhere with some sunny spells. I remember me thinking - this will be the perfect day to test my ND filter...and look what a shocking result….

  

If on the second image I can notice some small improvements with a sky in first it looks worse than it was on that day…-dull and blurry. So yes, probably we all need to learn from own mistakes…and make sure we not repeat that on the future….this buy was really failure…from all 23 filters probably useful 1/3….so I have to search for different ones.

Fallowing advice from my tutor I took a look of the original square filter system of COKIN:

http://www.cokin.co.uk/pages/main.htm 

I had to say I am more than imprest….I took some screen grabs to compere …there are lots and lots to choose from and I really regret now my bad choice before.

For example ND and Graduated filters….what colourful difference can make a good quality filter :

First is not even close to one rubbish I had….look how plain, white sky beautify appears, I cant see any major changes to the scene except that all looks perfect and complete now….as researching Cokin web page I find out that there is lots of different ND filters we can use, all depends of weather conditions and what kind a result we want get. Take for example that Gradual fog…probably the best thing for rainy autumn days or misty cityscapes, whith that filter every image can appear some unusual way….

I considering getting one of those, even if it is expensive….but -you get what you paying for-, that what I always say.

 New filters coming soon, so I hope without bad experience this time... will keeping my blog updating…