Filters (which and when?)

[Yvonne]

Filter lovers will hate me for saying this, but in my opinion, if you're going to invest in filters and bother with them, you should definitely start shooting in raw and start mastering software like Lightroom and perhaps Nik Efex first. Granted, sometimes nothing but a filter will do, but you'd be amazed what you can do in post with a raw file and good software.

nick, I tried to fix a bit of it with software and believe it or not, I took my shots in RAW and JPEG.
But it's really hard to do the post processing when you have no idea and basically no time to do so for the next several months
And I'm not a big filter fan, but this weekend I had situations where I wished I had one.
The contrast between the over and underexposed areas of my shots was sometimes extreme.

 

[Bill]

The contrast between the over and underexposed areas of my shots was sometimes extreme.

ND grads work great if you have a near perfect horizon, but that seems rare at least for me. I know people do some amazing things with grads and I gave it a shot with a cheap set of cokin P filters but I found that bracketing and layering works just as well for me.

But it's really hard to do the post processing when you have no idea and basically no time to do so for the next several months

Youtube should have a tutorial for anything and everything you want to do. As you become more comfortable with your workflow you will obviously become more efficient.

 

[Yvonne]

Youtube should have a tutorial for anything and everything you want to do. As you become more comfortable with your workflow you will obviously become more efficient.

maybe I just give it a try with software in the future. A few days off would be nice to practice and get comfortable, but right now that's definitely not happening.
I was a bit disappointed how some of my weekend's shot came out due to the washed out skies.