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kam_ill_eon
Jun 18, 2003, 3:42 PM
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How can you minimize the appearance of a "doctored" photo but still take a high quality shot using a filter? I want to get a polarized filter but I also don't want my photos to look like I spent 10 hours in Photoshop fixing them. I just want them to look natural. Is there a specific type of filter that will help me accomplish this goal?
Thanks for your help,
David
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tim
Jun 18, 2003, 4:00 PM
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In reply to: How can you minimize the appearance of a "doctored" photo but still take a high quality shot using a filter? I want to get a polarized filter but I also don't want my photos to look like I spent 10 hours in Photoshop fixing them. I just want them to look natural. Is there a specific type of filter that will help me accomplish this goal? Thanks for your help, David
''it depends''
Polarizers are particularly bad with regards to natural colors -- they are really only useful for eliminating glare off of metal/liquid surfaces, if you do not want your colors to look doctored.
an A2/81A "warming" filter can be helpful and provide a natural-looking boost to overly cold scenes (eg. ice on an overcast day)
graduated ND filters are literally neutral; if you know what you're doing with them, they provide probably the best results of any filter. and they're cheap.
personally I gave up on color fidelity a long time ago... I match the colors in the image against those I remember, and just roll with it. but I'm not as picky as I once was.
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kam_ill_eon
Jun 18, 2003, 4:07 PM
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Thanks for your help Tim. I want my colors to stand out just not look fake. When I take pictures of climbing they always seem to come out bland and lifeless.......not much to look at. I want to accent the color of the rock and still keep the natural beauty.
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krillen
Jun 19, 2003, 1:27 PM
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Polarizers DO make your colour pop, but like Tim said they are mostly used to cut reflected polarized light.
I have a Sky or Haze filter on all my lenses simply because they are cheap, they don't cost you a stop of light, and they make your skies a fantastic blue. In addition they act as a great inexpensive lens protector. This one is highly suggested.
One thing you'll want to look for aside from filters is light. If you have highly contrasting light (backlighting or direct midday sun) your film and camera can't handle it. So everything will be pushed towards the middle lightwise. Your shadows will out grey or fuzzy, and you colours will be washed out.
You might want to try getting your climbers to wear more colours. We have a habit of wearing no contrasting natural colours. this is BORING for the viewer.
Warming filter is a good one too, as Tim said.
Appearently Cokin and another company both have a blue/gold polarizer that I'd like to try. If you turn it one way it casts a blue hue on the scene, the other way it casts a gold hue. Very cool effect.
Give the regular polarizer a try and see if you still dont' like the results. Worse comes to worse you have it for when you are shooting and you need to cut out reflections.
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