Filter

[elliotspirrett]

<p>Hi all,<br />Just wondering whether anyone can recommend me a set of filters to use for my EOS 1000FN for different situations. I want a small range that will cover a variety of situations, and I'm not really sure what to use myself, so I thought I'd ask the venerable folk at photo.net<br>

Cheers,<br />Elliot.</p>

[Michael R Freeman]

<p>You don't need many if you are shooting color film.</p>

<p>1. A good circular polarizer<br>

2. An 81A or 81B warming filter for cloudy days or shooting in open shade<br>

3. A multicoated UV filter for shooting in nasty conditions, or used all the time for protection if you so prefer.</p>

<p>The above 3 will cover probably 99% of your shooting situations for color film. If you are shooting B&W, there are additional filters that will be necessary for controlling contrast, but I'm not a B&W shooter so I'll leave any recommendations for that side of things to someone else.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>When in doubt a good place to start is with the <a href="http://www.cokin.com/"><strong>Cokin</strong> </a> system. With careful shopping these can be purchased very cheaply. Whenever I'm uncertain about the benefits of a specialized filter I try one of the Cokins first. If the effect seems promising, then I'll invest in a higher quality equivalent from one of the better makers: Hoya, Kenko, Tiffen (well, some Tiffens are good), B+W, Lee, Singh-Ray, etc.</p>

[grant_hagen]

<p> Depending on what kind of subject matter you like to shoot, you could also benefit from neutral density filters (of various strengths) for creative motion blurs and minimizing depth of field and graduated neutral density filters to help tame excessive dynamic range in certain kinds of scenes.<br>

If you use mostly daylight balanced film but might find yourself shooting indoors under incandescent light, a tungsten filter might come in handy.</p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>I use a Red (25A) filter for B&W. For color, I have a UV filter but mostly because some of my lenses have an open front element and a circular polarizer. I have two specialty filters, a Cokin square, drop-in GND (1 stop and 2 stop plates) and a Hoya R72 (720nm) IR filter. The latter two are very rarely used but when I need the GND I'm glad I have it and when I find myself in the photographic doldrums, the IR is always fun.</p>