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Hi everyone, filters are a little confusing to me, when do you use them? When do you use ND's? 85? polarizers? And what do they do the frame? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

Patrick O'Rourke

 

Filters don't really affect the frame unless they are out of place. Different filters have different uses...too many to list here, but...

 

Neutral density (ND) filters are used to cut down on the amount of light you have entering the iris. For example, if you are shooting outside in direct sunlight and the light meter says you have to stop down to f/22, you would want to put an ND in front of the lens.

 

An ND .3 = 1 stop

An ND .6 = 2 stops

An ND .9 = 3 stops

 

So if you put an ND .6 in front of the lens, you would open up the iris to f/11 to compensate for the 2 stops.

 

The 85B filter is used to shoot tungsten film under daylight color temperatures (5500K.) Otherwise you wind up with a blue cast on the film. I think the 80A is used to shoot daylight film under tungsten light (3200K.)

 

Take a look at the Tiffen website or check out a few film books like Cinematography by Kris Malkiewicz. That might help, but usage is the best way to learn.

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Filters can be pretty fantastic when you start to play 'round with them. ND grads (hard and soft edge) when you use them will help you keep skys a nice blue color. Polarizer filters too will help get rid of reflections and darken the sky. The 85 can at once correct daylight to tungsten and also warm up tungsten ect.

Then there are all the glorious diffusion filters which can take the edge off of HD imagery, halo point sources in your frame ect.

Point being there is a wide wide world of filters.

I'd recommend the book Image Control by Hirscheld to get a good intro to 'em-- with pictures!

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