Lens Filters in Photography: Which Ones Are Actually Worth It

Overview: The Filters Used in Photography

To start, here’s a quick overview of the different lens filters in photography and how useful they actually are. Think of the table below as a brief summary of the article.

UV Filter

UV filters are often recommended, especially for beginner photographers. Honestly, we’re not fans of this advice at all.

What Does a UV Filter Do for Your Camera?

You may have first run into the topic of filters when buying your camera. If you bought it in a store, there’s a good chance the salesperson tried to sell you a UV filter right away to “protect the lens.”

If you turned down that offer, you made the right call — in our opinion. UV filters provide only minimal protection. On top of that, they risk absorbing light and negatively affecting the quality of your photos.

Is a UV Filter Worth It?

Sure, a UV filter does offer some protection for your lens. If you bump it into something, best-case scenario, only the filter breaks and the lens stays intact.

But honestly: that has never once happened to us in all these years — and we can be pretty clumsy sometimes.

To us, the negative impact on image quality is far worse than the risk of damaging our lens.

Our recommendation: skip the UV filter.

Polarizing Filter

Now we’re getting to a filter that’s genuinely useful. Polarizing filters — often called pol filters or CPL filters — are, in our view, an essential part of any camera kit.

What Does a Polarizing Filter Do?

A polarizing filter can improve your photos in several ways.

A Polarizing Filter Reduces Reflections

A polarizing filter minimizes reflections. When you photograph a water surface — rivers, lakes, the ocean — you often get glare and reflections on the water. That usually doesn’t look great in photos. With a polarizing filter, you can minimize or even completely eliminate those reflections.

And it’s not just water. It works on many surfaces that produce reflections — like leaves on a tree or glass windows.

In the two example images below, you can clearly see the difference. One important thing to note: the effects of a polarizing filter cannot be replicated in post-processing on your computer. Glare and reflections can really only be removed by using a filter at the time of shooting.

A Polarizing Filter Helps When Shooting Through Glass

When you photograph through a closed window, you often run into problems with unwanted reflections in the glass. A polarizing filter can reduce those reflections too.

It doesn’t work quite as reliably with glass as it does with water surfaces. Some glass has special coatings, the light may be coming from too many directions, or the angle of the camera to the glass may be awkward.

What we’re saying is: a polarizing filter is a great tool, but even its superpower has limits. Don’t be surprised if you can’t eliminate reflections entirely — that’s completely normal.

A Polarizing Filter Makes the Sky Look Bluer

But that’s still not all.

A polarizing filter also depolarizes light reflections in the sky, which often makes the sky appear noticeably bluer. And it’s not just the sky — all other elements in the frame get a boost in color saturation too, think lush green meadows or forests.

How Do You Use a Polarizing Filter Correctly?

To get the best results from a polarizing filter, you need to use it properly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like magic just by screwing it onto your lens.

A polarizing filter has a ring on the front that you rotate to adjust the filter. While looking through the viewfinder or at your display, you can see which position gives you the best results.

You need to do this before each shot, because the optimal setting changes depending on your position and the angle of the sunlight. Adjusting it isn’t difficult at all — you can see the results directly in the viewfinder. Over time, you’ll automatically think to adjust the polarizing filter before every shot.

Does It Make Sense to Leave the Polarizing Filter on the Lens All the Time?

We recommend only keeping the polarizing filter on your lens when it’s actually serving a purpose.

When we’re shooting landscapes or doing a photo walk through a city, we usually leave the filter on. Those are situations where reflections and glare are common and we want to counteract them. It wouldn’t make sense to keep screwing it on and off in those cases.

In most situations, leaving a polarizing filter on your lens doesn’t cause major negative effects. However, the same problems as with a UV filter can arise — it reduces some light and can negatively affect your images when you don’t actually need it.

So if you don’t need it, go ahead and take it off.

Which Polarizing Filter Should You Buy?

When you ask about polarizing filters at a camera store, you’ll often find only very expensive filters costing over 100 euros or very cheap ones that usually aren’t worth much.

That’s been our experience, at least. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way everywhere.

Over the years, we’ve tried many different filters — both very expensive and very affordable ones.

These days, we swear by Haida filters. They’re in the mid-price range and offer truly outstanding quality.

Haida Polarizing Filters on Amazon

ND Filter

Neutral density filters — or ND filters — can produce wonderful effects. Unlike a polarizing filter, an ND filter is primarily for photographers who are a bit more advanced and want to get even more out of their shots.

The abbreviation ND stands for neutral density, which is why they’re sometimes also called gray filters. You might come across one name or the other, but they all refer to the same thing. We’ll just call them ND filters here.

What Does an ND Filter Do?

An ND filter reduces the amount of light entering your camera. Normally, we love having plenty of light when shooting. But there are definitely situations where too much light is a problem — and that’s exactly where an ND filter comes in.

This is especially true when you want to shoot with very long shutter speeds in daylight. You can close the aperture and reduce the ISO to a minimum, but that still won’t be enough to expose for several seconds. That’s when an ND filter enters the picture.

By using an ND filter, you can shoot with very long shutter speeds even in daylight — so let’s take a closer look at why that’s actually useful.

Using an ND Filter to Blur Water or the Sky

When you shoot with a long shutter speed, all movement in your scene is recorded over the entire exposure period. If you expose for 10 seconds, for example, any movement an object makes during those 10 seconds is captured in your image.

Particularly beautiful effects come from photographing waterfalls, rivers and lakes, or a cloud-filled sky.

Since the water and clouds are moving during the exposure, they appear soft and silky in the final image — which often produces stunning results.

Removing Distracting Elements from a Photo

An ND filter is also great for quickly removing people or other moving subjects from your shot.

At popular tourist attractions, it’s often nearly impossible to get a crowd-free photo. But with an ND filter, it can actually work.

If you expose for 30 seconds, for instance, there’s a good chance that most people in the frame will simply disappear — since they’re moving around.

It doesn’t always work perfectly, because there are often a few people who barely move and remain visible even after a long exposure. But in general, it works pretty well.

How Do You Use an ND Filter?

Here’s a quick overview of how to use one.

First of all, you’ll definitely need a tripod, since handholding your camera during long exposures will result in blurry images. Mount your camera on the tripod, frame your shot, and focus.

Then screw the ND filter onto your lens. Depending on your camera, you’ll either see complete black through the viewfinder or a slightly darkened image.

With an optical viewfinder — like on a DSLR — you’ll just see black. In that case, switch to manual focus, since your camera will try to autofocus on something and will almost certainly fail.

With a mirrorless camera or compact camera with an electronic viewfinder, you can usually still see something through the viewfinder even with the filter attached, and in most cases autofocus will still work.

Next, adjust your aperture and shutter speed so your image is properly exposed. You’ll probably need to take several test shots before you find the perfect settings.

Can You Combine a Polarizing Filter and an ND Filter?

Especially when shooting water, it’s highly recommended to combine the ND filter with a polarizing filter.

To do this, first screw the polarizing filter onto your lens and adjust it. Then screw the ND filter on top of the polarizing filter. Just be careful not to accidentally move the polarizing filter in the process.

Which ND Filter Should You Buy?

ND filters come in different strengths, indicated by a number — typically ranging from ND2 up to ND4000.

ND4000 filters are the strongest, meaning they block the most light and allow for the longest shutter speeds.

The table below shows some example calculations. For instance, if you’d normally shoot at a shutter speed of 1/500 s to get a properly exposed image without a filter, an ND1000 filter would extend that shutter speed to 2 seconds.

Filter strength can also be expressed in f-stops or stops, and sometimes in logarithmic values — that’s why we’ve included those values in the table as well. But regardless of which value is used, the higher the number, the greater the light reduction.

For starters, we recommend buying just one ND1000 filter. Weaker filters like ND64 or ND16 do have their place, but they’re better suited for very specific situations. As a hobby photographer, you’ll reach for the ND1000 most often.

Variable ND filters also exist, where you can adjust the strength by rotating a ring. That sounds clever at first glance, but in practice they often show clear weaknesses in image quality — so we don’t recommend them.

We’ve had great experiences with Haida filters here as well.

Haida ND Filters on Amazon

Graduated ND Filter

Finally, we also want to talk about graduated ND filters. These are special ND filters that don’t darken the entire image — only part of it. They’re intended for more advanced photographers, so we won’t go into too much detail here.

What Does a Graduated ND Filter Do?

Graduated ND filters are used when your scene has a very high contrast in brightness. This is especially common during sunrises and sunsets.

If you apply a regular ND filter evenly across the frame in that kind of lighting situation, your foreground will very likely end up completely black.

That’s where a graduated ND filter helps. It only darkens part of your image — in this case, the sky — while leaving the foreground unaffected.

Which Graduated ND Filter Should You Buy?

Graduated ND filters are available as screw-on filters, but slide-in systems are more commonly used for them, since they’re simply more flexible. These systems consist of individual filter plates that you slide into a filter holder, which is then screwed onto your lens.

That sounds complicated and cumbersome — and honestly, it is. That’s why we won’t go into the details of how to use these filters here.

If you’re really serious about landscape photography and frequently deal with contrast issues, a filter like this is a great solution. For the average hobby photographer, though, such a system is overkill in our opinion.

If you do want to buy a graduated ND filter, you’ll first need to decide between screw-on filters and a slide-in system. We’d definitely go with a slide-in system — screw-on filters are simply too inflexible. With a slide-in system, you can shift the plate to match the gradient much more precisely to your scene.

You’ll also have a choice between different types:

• Hard Graduated Filters (Hard): These filters have a hard transition. The upper half — or upper quarter or third — is dark, and the rest is bright.
• Soft Graduated Filters (Soft): These filters have a soft, gradual transition instead of a hard edge.
• Reverse Filters: With these filters, the center is the darkest area, gradually getting brighter toward both the top and bottom.

We personally use the Rollei slide-in filter system:

Rollei Slide-In Filter System

Haida also offers a system like this:

Haida Slide-In Filter System

Buying Guide: Photography Filters

Here are a few quick tips on what to look for when buying camera lens filters.

Screw-On Filters vs. Slide-In Filters

In the section on graduated ND filters, we briefly covered the difference: screw-on filters simply thread directly onto your lens.

Slide-in systems are considerably more complex. They require a filter holder that screws onto the lens, into which you then slide individual filter plates made of glass or plastic. It’s much more complicated and bulky, but it offers more flexibility for professional use.

Unless you’re a professional photographer, we recommend sticking with screw-on filters.

The Right Diameter

Screw-on filters come in various diameters. The size you need depends on your lens.

The diameter is almost always printed on the front of the lens. If you can’t find it, you can quickly measure it with a ruler.

Can You Attach a Filter to Any Lens?

Most lenses have a thread that you can screw a filter onto. However, there are exceptions — so check beforehand whether your lens has a thread.

Exceptions are typically lenses with a built-in fixed lens hood, or fixed lenses on compact cameras or bridge cameras. On these cameras, it’s not always possible to attach a filter.

What's the Best Way to Transport Filters?

Filters typically come in a padded plastic case, which provides decent protection. But these plastic cases have two drawbacks: they can pop open in your camera bag, and they’re quite bulky — especially when you’re carrying multiple filters.

There’s a simple but brilliant solution: filter caps or metal filter containers. You screw these caps onto the top and bottom of your filters, and you can stack as many filters of the same size as you want in between. It doesn’t get more compact or secure than that.

Filter Caps on Amazon

Our Video: Which Filters Do You Really Need in Photography

We also made a short video where we’ve summarized the most important information about lens filters in photography for you.

Our Video About Filters in Photography