Complete Guide to Filters for Digital Photography [BOOK REVIEW]
Here’s a book that should take a lot of the angst out of digital photography – Complete Guide to Filters for Digital Photography.
For the ‘ole film gang’ there used to be numerous books published that explained the use of camera filters. With digital, as many are increasingly discovering, you have can create the effect of a filter after the shoot, at the point of software manipulation. Tempting but somewhat dangerous.
It’s invaluable to restate, as this book does, that the principle and effects of lens filtration applies when the image is first committed to the film or the digital film the image sensor.
All the fundamentals are there: colour temperature, exposure corrections when filters are used and the effect on the subject.
About a third the way through Joseph Meehan’s gorgeously illustrated book you begin to get the message that care in capture is fundamental.
An example: correct setting of a digital camera’s white balance at the moment of capture is critically important and, if you decide to later correct a colour cast at the software stage, you could be asking for trouble.
The colour correction filters, the 81s, the 85s etc and their uses are described; so are the colour compensating (CC) filters, as well as the grads, the NDs and so on.
Meehan also includes an interesting chapter on colour correcting RAW image files, then moves on to the tricky tasks of software removal of colour casts and how to enhance skin tones.
Naturally, the book’s later pages dig into digital filtration with the use of software and offers some techniques on how to successfully simulate B&W images from colour originals, make faux versions of Cyanotype, sepia, platinum processes etc.
For a step away from the ordinary in the current flood of books on digital photography, this book deserves notice. Ideal for the pro or advanced amateur.
Get a copy of Complete Guide to Filters for Digital Photography at Amazon.
- Author: J Meehan.
- Publisher: Lark Books.
- Distributor: Capricorn Link.
- ISBN: 1 57990 447 5.
- Length: 168 pages
3 Responses to “Complete Guide to Filters for Digital Photography [BOOK REVIEW]” - Add Yours
August 18th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Bit niche isn’t it? Given that only 3 types of filter are really necessary for digital. You need an ND, a grad ND and a polarising filter. That is it. The rest can be recreated in software much easier that actually using a filter (and the grad ND can be recreated as well if you have a tripod and don’t mind blending exposures)
August 18th, 2009 at 3:48 am
uv’s are useful too
August 18th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I can also recomend “A Digital Photographers Guide to Filters” by Ross Hoddinott. Probably covers the same topics, and for anyone who is interested in the physics of light, or how light can be manipulated by glass will enjoy filter books. I am young in my photography, but I so far I can say there are some shots that are not worth taking without a filter, once you have seen the differences they can make you will be hooked. Of course a lot can be manipulated on a computer, but you cant come close to replicating some of the things a simple piece of glass can do!
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