looking for a polarising filter for my shiny new dslr, got a bit of a shock at the prices, whats a good place to shop?

Polarisers are expensive.

Incidentally, I didn’t find it made much difference on my SLR.

Amazon, and not a reseller at that. Will likely be fake if off ebay / a reseller.

Won’t be cheap at any kind of decent diameter – the UV filter for my 77mm diameter lens was 50 quid. Polariser will be more expensive….

To be fair you can do most of what a polariser does by shooting in RAW and fiddling with levels.

I have generally found speedgraphic.co.uk to have good stock and prices.

Depending on the circumstances I have found a polariser enormously helpful but you have to be pointing your camera in the correct direction 🙂

A polariser is just about the ONLY filter that you can’t replace with Photoshop.

Well i know there are some things you can’t do with photoshop, but I’ve always suspected that most people only want them to get super blue skies, and that’s easy to do….

Some filters are better than others

7dayshop.com ?

I’ve used Premier Ink in the past and have been very happy with price and delivery.

So what UV filter then?

I’ve decided against using them for protection, but I wouldn’t mind at least one for landscapes.

Why?

I’ve only got a UV on there for protection… what would it do for landscapes?

Actually, I’ll qualify that.

Why would you need a UV filter when a) it’ll make zero difference to your photographs, and b) in all likelyhood your lens will filter UV already?

molgrips…I though you were the photo guru ! UV filer for landscapes ? Plain glass or plastic, even cling film will protect against UV, but won’t enhance a picture

Last time we discussed this I found comparison pictures on an SLR and there did seem to be a difference.

white101 what dia. filter are you after ?

molgrips…I though you were the photo guru !

Hah!

I bought kood adapters and Cokin filters from here:
http://www.surreyphotography.co.uk/
They were the cheapest at the time (2007 – blimey was it that long ago!)

Removing reflections is something polorizers do incredibly well. So for street photography and shots of water, they can be indispensable.

Plus for skys – RAW can be good, but I guess it’s always better to get the exposure you want before processing.

The other filter that can produce results that no photoshop can replicate is an ND filter – used to create longer exposures in bright conditions.

What about ND gradient filters? I’m always finding it hard to balance exposure between the sky and the ground.

Anyone know if Photoshop PSD files have the same dynamic range as RAW? Cos what I’d like to be able to do is adjust the exposure for the sky and ground separately, and I can only chop the image up after closing the RAW editor…

Molgrips..lots of ND grads on ebay. I don’t make any claims to photographic expertise, but I find the ND grads the the filter I go for most often. I am not patient enough to sit enhancing photos on a PC, so getting a filter that does the job far quicker is better for me 8)

Hmm.. conversely I’m a bit less inclined to faff about with filters when shooting 🙂 Plus a ND filter assumes a flat horizon in the middle of the frame. PS would be more flexible.

I did wish for a dark ND filter a few times a while back but I forget what the situation was 🙂

Note to self: remember to experiment with UV filters tonight.

UV filters generally have little or effect on DSLRs because they aren’t very sensitive to UV light, unlike film. In fact,if you investigate DSLR UV photography, you’ll find there are very few standard DSLRs that are suitable due to this.

Going slightly off at a tangent, when I switched from film to digital I was one of the very vocal supporters of filters for protection. One day however I went out without my Skylight 1a filter on and found something quite amazing: My Nikon lenses didn’t seem to attract dirt like my top Quality Hoya filters, in fact, other than a quick blow off (narf narf) I haven’t had to clean a lens since!

Last time we discussed this I found comparison pictures on an SLR and there did seem to be a difference.

SLR != DSLR. My understanding, with the usual caveats, is that UV filters are a throwback to film days and wholly pointless on a DSLR.

EDIT: or, what Tucker said. (-:

What about ND gradient filters?

I’ve been looking at the same question myself. They seem to fall into two categories, “expensive” and “crap.” I really fancy one, but knowing what to get is a minefield.

There is an in between Cougar – Hi-tec ND grads are mid-priced and really pretty good – used them for years before upgrading to Cokin X-Pro with a Lee filter holder. Try buying a Lee polariser though 😯
££$$$££$!

SLR != DSLR

I meant DSLR, you should all know by now that I haven’t shot film in over a decade 🙂

Just looked at the Hitech ones, thanks for that.

I think for where I am now, I’m not ready to invest in a “filter system” a la Cokin. I know all the benefits over screw-ins, but I just can’t justify the expense.

Put another way, if I was splashing a hundred quid on photography equipment then there’s other things I’d want first. Conversely, dropping £20 at something that’ll let me take daylight shots without the sky blowing out, that’s a more worthwhile spend for me.

I meant DSLR, you should all know by now that I haven’t shot film in over a decade

You said you were looking at some SLR shots, you didn’t say you’d taken them. I assumed you were looking at comparison shots on t’intertubes.

The other filter that can produce results that no photoshop can replicate is an ND filter – used to create longer exposures in bright conditions.

True dat. Nice for making really long exposures of water.

Molgrips – No, photoshop files don’t let you adjust the dynamic range of a photo. Once you’ve done the raw conversion, you’re stuck.

What I used to be before I got Lightroom, was do two RAW conversions of the same image and then overlay them with graduated masks

True dat. Nice for making really long exposures of water.

Yep, or having people blur in street photography for another example.

AS – good idea.. I knew someone would have figured it out 🙂

What does LR let you do instead then?

AFAIK it doesn’t really ever fix a RAW conversion.
So basically you’re always in that RAW conversion mode that you see in photoshop.
Then you can apply graduated filters for exposure/brightness/etc. AFAIK these are using the data from the RAW file.

However, lightroom seems to be able to dig out detail from iPhone photos too, so god knows how it does that!

But you can’t do the complex editing of PS, right?

If I wanted to say chop out the sky and adjust that differently I’d need a complex selection in PS.. does LR do that stuff too?

There’s a 30-day trial, incidentally.

Yeah but I don’t think I need it for what I want to do. I’m better of spending £100 ish on DxO Optics Pro I reckon.

Molgrips. I’m on LR2.2 You can paint with an adjustment brush, but that’s all.
There’s a lot of things you can do in photoshop that LR can’t do, But they can also work in tandem. I.e. temporarily work in photoshop to do some cloning, but then drop back into LR to keep everything neat and tidy.

LR completely changed my workflow and I’ll never go back to only having PS.
All my photos are much better organised now, without all the dulicates and mixed jpg/raw/tiff/psd files all over the place.

Mmm so if you cross over to PS then you should lose the RAWness of the image no?

I thought it was mega expensive but it seems it isn’t.. hmm.. but really I’m not going to be processing lots of images.

Yes, you do, but it’s not destructive. The original is intact, yet when you view your library of photos, you only see the newly edited version.

There are probably other apps which do the same, but for me, it’s about being able to quickly edit a handful of image and browse the others, deleting the ones I don’t want and keeping a nice neat library and workflow.

I can achieve so much in so little time, whereas with photoshop I used to dread image editing as it would eat up so much time.

BTW – I make my living mostly in photoshop/illustrator, so it took quite a bit to prise me away from it, but I’m really glad I did.

So far I’m using Elements Organiser which is a bit pants in some ways, but it works and is well featured. Browsing through and giving the photos worth anything star ratings, and I’m going to delete all the no-stars. Then I just take the odd good image and open it with PS when I want to do something with it.

Biggest issue is the face recognition and thumbnail generation from RAW images and videos beating the living sh*t out of my dual core cpu.