Photographic Filters

Silky Waterfalls

photo-info — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:20:54 -0400

Ever wondered how to get that silky smooth looking waterfall with nice vibrant colours? Well, it's not as difficult as you might think.

The main thing that you need to do is get the shutter speed down low. This particular image was shot at 1/5 sec. If you are shooting with low shutter speeds you will also need to have a good tripod or some other means of supporting your camera. You can use a cable release, or for this type of photography the shutter delay timer on your camera will work just as well.

Getting the shutter speed down low can be difficult during the day, but is easily achieved with the aid of a filter. You have a couple of choices, an ND (Neutral Density) filter - this basically reduces the amount of light hitting the sensor (or film) of your camera.

Graduated ND Filters

photo-info — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:11:49 -0500

Filters are an important part of many photographers toolkits. Even today, with the software tools available to the Digital Photographer - optical filters are essential.

It is much easier to get the image as close to what you are trying to achieve at the camera and use software for fine tuning. No matter how much you try with software if you have an image that is not good quality to start with you can't fix it! With software you can make good quality pictures great.

Graduated ND (Neutral Density) Filters have the effect of reducing the exposure over part of the image. A portion of the filter is clear and another portion is grey and blocks some amount of light. This helps to stop the washed out highlights particularly evident in the sky.