Originally posted by the Bear:
thanks man
was reading through the Sony thing they sent to me and was thinking of getting a digital cam of my own...
what the heck are:
PL Filters
ND Filters
from the pictures, they took a waterfall.. before was individual drops of water.. after the filters was like a "curtain"
is a Lens Hood necessary?
also, are Wide Conversion Lenses and Tele Conversion Lenses any good?
Thanks man
hmm not familiar with sony at all but i can answer the specific questions.
PL filters - polarizing filters. ok these filters get rid of polarized light. when light hits an object, the object absorbs some of the wavelength of the light and reflects the rest, hence u get colours. however some of the light gets reflected irregardless of the colour of the object like a "gloss" effect. means it hits the surface and ALL the light is reflected.. like a mirror.
a polarizer get's rid of this "gloss" reflection so u get more vivid colours, and gets rid of reflections. u can twist the filter around to get "in between" settings of reflections and no reflections.
practical applications of this filter, besides getting more vivid colours, is getting a "bluer sky"... that's why those shots at club med looks SOOOO nice...
ND filter - neutral density filter, is like a pair of sunglasses for the camera, when lighting conditions are too bright, and u wanna use a slower shutter speed and/or a bigger aperture. without it, u wouldn't be able to use that slow speed since the photo will be over exposed. a practical application of this would be to lower the depth of field (make backgroud more blurr) of a brightly lit frame, or slow the shutter speed to capture movement blur. they come in different degrees of "shade" i think it's termed +2 +4 +8...
ur water fall pictures could be different due to the shuitter speed. a fast shutter will "freeze" each drop in motion, whereas a slow shutter will record the movement of the water, hence a "curtain image. it could also be becos of a PL filter, where the "clear" water was taken with the polarizer rotated to get rid of reflections, and the curtain effect to maximise reflections. imagine ur window. without reflections u can see thru it, with reflections, less likely.
lens hoods are to reduce light coming in to the lens from wide angles which could reflect inside the lens in an unfavourable manner, i think it results in wat is called a "lens flare" of course hard light into the lens (like the direct sun) will also result in lens flares. it is not entirely necessary, i dun use one and dun seem to have problems, but some pple use it also to protect the lens physically since the hood juts out and large objects won't be able to get in and "hit" the lens.
conversion lenses are the next best thing to buying the real lens itself. (of course with a non SLR, it's the ONLY way to add focal length range to ur cam). some are made with good quality, some pretty bad. it works if u need it to, but dun need to get unless u really need the extra zoom or wide focal lengths. eg my cam already has a 8x (about 280mm on 35mm equiv) which is already very big.
ok hope that helps! ehhe the part of the PL filter can be quite confusing, maybe i'll post pics to show u the difference.
