Specific FILTER Questions re: Digital

[jim_fenton1]

Hi....

 

A couple of questions if I might:

 

A) Is a "warming" polarizer needed on digital vs. a non warming or

can this effect be manipultaed with the white balance functions of

the digital camera? (Nikon D70 when it arrives).

 

B) When shooting black and white with a digital camera (I'm assuming

that you can do this?) is a yellow filter required to darken the sky

(no washout), hightlight clouds, etc?

 

Thanks....and if there is some reference that I can buy to read and

learn from that will answer filter questions relative to digital

photography, please let me know.

 

Thanks,

 

Jim Fenton

[joseph_wisniewski]

No and no. ;)

 

You're right, you can do as much warming and coolig as you like via white balance.

 

And you can do any red, yellow, green, blue, etc. filter through PhotoShop (or even the GIMP, if you want a free program that does 90% of what PhotoShop does). A yellow filter won't hurt the picture. Red, green, and blue filters disrupt digital camera operations. They use all the colors (expecially green) to interpolate images. Eliminate the green, and you throuw ayay 3/4 of the camera's resolution.

[james_castagno]

You do not need filters as the white balance will affect the over all tone but you will be better off controlling that aspect of the photo with the color temperature setting in the camera. You can also use Photoshop to achieve whatever results you require. As far as I know there are no digital cameras witha B&W setting, you will have to take color images and either have them printed at a digital lab in B&W or make them B&W in a photo editing program.

[jkdufair]

Actually, my Olympus C-3020 does indeed have a B&W mode (and a sepia mode). Not sure how it works or whether there's any loss (other than color data), but the pictures look pretty nice. I wish my Digital Rebel had that function. Sometimes I don't even want to see the "color version" of a shot.

[joseph_wisniewski]

"As far as I know there are no digital cameras witha B&W setting".

 

Actually, almost all "point and shoot" and "prosumer" digital cameras have one. In a way, it's great, because you can compose your picture in black and white, instead of trying to visualize black and white or use those horrid B&W viewing filters.

 

In DSLRs, I think the Fuji S2 is the only one currently on the market that lets you shoot B&W directly from the camera (and view it in B&Won the camera LCD after shooting). In general, I prefer to shoot color and turn it into black and white later. An image processing program like PhotoShop (or even the GIMP, if you want something free, but remarkably good) lets you do things like using just the red channel in your B&W conversion for dark, dramatic skies, or just the green channel for flattering portraits, just like we used to do with filters, back in the day.

[charles_brown1]

A corollary question then:

 

What specific filters, if any, are recommended for a lens fitted to a DSLR... especially when filters present the first line of defense for lens protection in use?

 

Skylight 1B ?

 

UV Haze (Sharp Cut) or 1x ?

 

Are there any caveats hidden in the use of the above named filters in digital applications... ie, loss of resolution due to filtering out certain color wavelengths, etc?

 

Thanks in anticipation... oh, and this isn't intended to hijack the original question... in fact, it is such a related subject that it seemed to belong in this similar discussion, rather than starting a new thread.

[howard_grill]

Along the same lines...can/should a circular polarizer be used to eliminate glare and reflections as well as saturate the colors (realizing you can saturate in PS but it seems like it would be helpful to control glare as this is more difficult in PS).