Will be taking the Ansel Adams walk in two weeks, suggestions for Conkin filters will be appreciated.

-- Steve & Diane Nelson (nelson161@mindspring.com), April 26, 2000

Answers

Not knowing what the "Ansel Adams Walk" is, I take it to be a hike through a national park for landscape photography. The recommendation depends on how much money you wish to spend, and how many filters you wish to experiment with.

You should be fine for almost anything with the following:

- yellow (to darken blue skies and shadows in general just a bit, and to slightly lighten foliage)

- orange (more or less the same as yellow, but more intense)

- red (for dramatic, almost black skies, dark shadows)

- green (to lighten foliage and give better differentiation in green tones)

- blue (to simulate ortho film, i.e. lighten shadows and render the blue sky as pure white)

If you have the time, experiment with the filters, i.e. shoot the same images with and without.

If you want to keep it simple, just take along a yellow filter. The rendition of the sky is then usually fine, but not too dramatic yet, and the shadows are not too close to blocking. (BTW: A grad filter [gray, 1 or 2 f-stops] can help with burnt-out skies, too, if the horizon is fairly straight.) Even today, a yellow filter is often recommended as standard filter for b&w landscape shots, i.e. as a filter to be left on the lens for all shots, although the spectral sensitivities of films have changed a bit since this recommendation was first given.

Don't get lost between all those filters, and use them with care. If I recall it correctly, AA always cautioned his readers not to over-filter.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), April 27, 2000.

After many, many years I still do not understand why anyone would purchase high quality optics and then feel the need to put a piece of plastic in front!

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), April 29, 2000.

I use a Nikon X0 (yellow/green) for most my landscape photos. I like the way it accentuates the clouds by darkening the blue sky and lightening the different shades of green foliage.I use it for sea- scapes as well with very pleasant results, it lightens the green sea water and makes for a dramatic separation with the blue sky at the horizon, works well with portraits as well.In addition I occasionally use a #25 red filter for more dramatic sky effects. BTW - why plastic filters?

-- Robert Orofino (rorofino@iopener.net), May 02, 2000.

Use B+w filters.

-- Walter Massa (massacam@aol.com), May 02, 2000.

Why plastic?

There are a couple of reasons:

1) Most important to me is WEIGHT. I hike a lot with all my equipment on my back. (What is landscape photography w/o experiencing the landscape?) Plastic is lighter than glass. This is even more true if you carry about quite a few lenses with different diameters (usually four in my case). There may be standard diameters for standard lenses, but take along PC/shift lenses or very fast lenses, and standard diameters are forgotten. So, instead of carrying each filter I deem necessary in four versions, I have one each that fits on all lenses.

2) Money: Yeah, that's a point, too. While individual filters may not be much cheaper than glass filters, consider the need for different diameters again. BTW: It's not at all "cheap plastic" you get. The filters are manufactured to high standards, and the manufacturers claim that their filters are equivalent to glass filters. Indeed, you can make very good plastic filters (as you can make inferior glass stuff). The only argument against plastic as a material is its vulnerability. It's easier to scratch plastic. However, I wonder how many glass filters there are where the coating has long been wiped off, and for which the owners still claim superior quality.

3) Ease of handling: I love to play around with filters, to shoot the same foto w/ different filters, or to shoot w/ and w/o. (It's a bit like bracketing.) Do that with screw-in filters!

4) The lens hood is also an argument for Cokin (or equivalent) filters: For most of my shots, I use a bellows hood. As I mentioned above, I am very fond of PC lenses, and once you shift, the only way to effectively use a hood is using a bellows hood. It is a fine feature of Cokin (and others) that you can insert/remove/change the filters w/o having to fiddle with the hood. I know many photographers don't use hoods very often (maybe because they got tired of screwing things on and off the lens?), but a Cokin filter used w/ a hood is definitely superior to a glass filter w/o.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), May 03, 2000.