Photography tip - Which filter does what?

You may have heard people talking about SLR Camera Filters.

Filters are basically a piece of glass which screw on to the end of your SLR Camera lens, now there are hundreds of different sizes, types, shapes, colours of filters out there and it can sometimes be difficult to know which one you're after. So i've put together this mini guide with a brief explenation of what some of the more common filters do.

NB. You need to buy the same diameter filter as your camera lens, which will be printed on the very end of your lens. This is very important.

UV Filter
A UV Filter is the most basic of filters, usually the cheapest these don't do an awful lot. They serve 2 main purposes.


1 - To filter out any harsh glares you may be getting from the sun.
2 - To protect your lens from scratches.

The latter is the reason most people use UV filters

Polarising Filters
Polarising filters are used for mainly outdoor photography, these can be twisted to achieve different effects.
The generally deepen the blues of the skies, and enhance the colours throughout the landscape. Best used on bright days

Close up Filters (+x)
These filters are simply for Macro use, the allow the camera to get closer to the subject. Depending on the number of the filter, thats how many times closer you can get. For example  a close up +4 filter, means you can get 4 times closer than you would be able to without the filter.

Black&White/Sepia Filters
These do exactly what it says on the tin, and allows you to shoot directly in black and white or sepia for people who prefer not to edit there photographs in an editing software

IR Filters.
These are only used for very specialist infra red photography, and no need to worry about!!

Coloured filters
These come in virtually every colour and it'll give a tint to the picture. These are very useful if you are into turning your pictures into black and white, for example using a red filter then turning it into black and white creates a very nice contrast to the picture, once again, enhancing your photography.

Warming Filters
Increases reds, reduces blue. Makes the photo seem warmer.

Cooling Filters.
Increases blues, decreases reds. Makes the photo seem cooler.

The absolute ESSENTIAL filters you MUST have in your collection are, a UV, a ND filter, a Circular Polarising, and at least one coloured filter. Anything else you can play around with. I have over 100 filters in my filter wallet.
I also recommend getting a filter wallet to store them neatly in (Search filter wallet in your favourite search engine ;) )

Jessops, 7DayShop, Amazon and eBay are all great places to pick up good quality, cheap filters.

Enjoy!!