Wedding photographer: Are filters useful for wedding photography?

Lens filters are widely used in photography. Are they useful in digital wedding photography or are wedding photographers better using digital filters in Photoshop?

The short answer is probably not if you are using a digital SLR .

I can already hear the protests from some folk so I had better give a long answer too.

And here it is.

Lens filters with film cameras

Back in the days of yore people used film. Every film has a recommended colour temperature for its use. Most film is daylight balanced film , but there are many others such as film balanced for tungsten lighting . All these films react to light but they all react to the electromagnetic spectrum in a different way and give what most people would regard as a pleasing result when used with lighting of the specified colour temperature .

An important point to make is that you don't have to use these films this way, you might want the effect created by using a film, intended for use at a different colour temperature, at your colour temperature. Another way of doing this and with much greater precision is to use lens filters. Filters effectively change the colour temperture of the light hitting the film and the huge variety of filters dwarfs the range of films available and of course you don't need to keep changing film or camera backs each time. So lens filters with film are hugely useful . There are even filters which correct for using the wrong film in a given lighting situation, eg a tungsten film in daylight.

Common filters used for film include skylight , UV , warm up and cool down filters .

Digital filters for the digital wedding photographer

A wedding photographer using a digital camera can do all this and more in software such as Photoshop . When shooting digital the important issue is not which filter to use but to make sure you get the correct white balance at the time you take the shot. This saves endless hassle post processing not to mention the fact you will never get it exactly right. Crucially this enables you to start with the "correct" colours and then apply digital filters as you wish, most likely warm up or cool down filters or to convert to monochrome (black and white, sepia, etc.)

Some filters are still useful

Of course things are never quite this simple. You will of course want a protection filter , typically but not always a UV filter on the front of your lens . You might want a polarising filter which is really a special type of filter and doesn't really belong in this discussion. And you may want to apply a filter which is so extreme that what I will very inaccurately call "noise" becomes a problem if you don't apply the filter when you take the picture. For the wedding photographer an extreme filter is not something likely to be encountered. Most brides and grooms will not thank you for weird colours, it is more an issue for photographing landscapes , architecture , and for some portrait photography .

What's this about noise if you don't apply extreme filters "on the lens"?

Remember I'm using the term "noise" in a very inaccurate way here. I don't want to be distracted here by what this noise really consists of. Suffice to say when you look at the image, this "noise" makes it unpleasant to look at.

Consider the following albeit rather unlikely example. Suppose you photograph a tree, just a normal green leaved tree minding its own business. Suppose this is an apple tree and there is one red apple hanging in the shade of the higher branches and leaves. This apple is therefore fairly dimly lit but you have just got to have it bright and sparkly so you apply a red filter on the lens which lets through all the red from the apple but cuts back significantly on the green from the tree. Probably you are on your way to making a black and white image of this tree and want a near white apple and a dark tree.

Now suppose you don't apply the filter at the lens, and instead take a nicely white balanced photo and apply digital filters on your computer later. Most of the light which the camera recorded is essentially discarded because it is green. The light which remains is red and there isn't much of it, mainly just the apple which was dimly lit. This red light is essentially a poorly exposed reddish image and is starting to suffer from noise from the camera sensor. If only you had exposed this dimly lit red image for longer! You realise too late that you could have done this. If you had used lens filters , the green would have been suppressed and the camera would have increased the exposure so that the dimly lit apple is now well exposed and your apple's signal to noise is much better.

In a nutshell: When a strong filter effect is required for digital photography, it might still be worth considering using a filter on the lens. That isn't likely in my style of reportage wedding photography but might be quite likely in, for example, some landscape photography.

Digital wedding photographers don't need to use lens filters

So I think it is true to say that digital wedding photographers don't need to worry about filters at the point of taking a photo except for a protection filter for their lens (I use a UV filter) and a polarising filter if they so desire. Just get the white balance right when you take the photo so that at least you know what the unfiltered image should look like. I custom white balance all my photos at the point I take the photo each time the lighting changes and it saves endless hours of post processing and guess work.