Digital Photo Tip # 38 By Bruce Kirkby Apr 1, 2008

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In today’s world of digital retouching and colour correction, lens filters are gradually becoming obsolete. By and large, this is a good thing:most filters produce images that can look contrived, even potentially fake—think misty edges and starbursts.

But despite the questionable rep, there are two filters you should absolutely consider carrying with the rest of your camera gear: a polarizer and a graduated neutral density filter (GNDF). I’ve discussed both of these filters in previous columns, as they’re both essential tools for capturing sheer, natural beauty ( visit our archives at up-magazine.com for more filter tips).

Polarizers deepen the blues in a clear sky, or take the sheen off of verdant foliage. They should be used whenever you are in the mountains or near water. A GNDF is a simple plastic square—dark on top, clear on the bottom—that is invaluable around both sunrise and sunset for matching the exposure of the sky’s pastels with the silhouetted details in the foreground.

Since these filters are so important, and because a picture is always worth a thousand words, I want to show you exactly what these two filters can do for your results. Hopefully this will inspire you to make a few inches of space for them in your camera bag.

POLARIZING FILTER

These two images of merlins perched before the Torres del Paine in Patagonia were taken moments apart.

The only difference is that I added a polarizer for the shot on the right.Beyond deepening the sky’s hue, the polarizer also cut glare from the low clouds, allowing more saturation to be seen in the rock and tree.

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