Use warming filters at high altitude with point-and-shoot?

Back in the ancient era when I used film, I often used a warming filter at

altitudes above 2000 m (6000 ft) or so. An 81B or KR3 cut the blue UV look and

added just a subtle bit of warmth to a photo. Please excuse if this is a naive

question, but should I follow the same practice with a digital camera at high

altitude, especially for a camera where I can not save the RAW file? I am not

quite sure if automatic white balance can compensate for the UV and extra blue.

Thanks for your advice!

My advice is Yes, use a warming filter at high altitudes with digital cameras. When I first got my DSLR I did not because the experts said you did not have to. You could make any adj you needed to in post processing is you shot in RAW. Well I quickly found out that for my shooting style it was much easier to add the filter to the lens than to set a custom white balance on the camera or change the white balance during post processing. When I tried to set a custom white balance, I still had to change it during post processing and still did not always like the results. I got the best results with just adding the filter. Use good quality filters. I use B+W KR3. Joe Smith

If you are using auto white balance, I'd assume the camera will attempt to compensate for any color correcting filters you use, so you may not get what you expect. If you use sunny, cloudy, shade or any of the fixed white balance options, the effect of a filter should show up.

 

However, you can do the correction in the digital file after exposure. For small corrections like slight warming, you don't need to shoot RAW files, you can correct the JPEG with no problems of quality loss.

I'd try and learn how to do it in processing. The problem is that there are several warming

filters. Do you really want to carry several? That seems like more trouble to me. Also, how do

you attach them? Most Ps cameras don't threads.

Yes. Use the warming filter and set your WB for the condition. Probably for Sunlight or perhaps Cloudy. (AWB with color filters has never worked well for me.)

 

It is a pain in the rear to color correct 300 images that you just downloaded from your card. The filter will correct each image as you take the shot. That should save you quite a bit of time.