Photography Techniques

Using filters technique

Optical filters can make all the difference to your pictures, especially when you shoot on transparency film, as Mike Busselle explains.
Words & Photos Mike Busselle

Some photographers dismiss the use of filters as being gimmicky and of distorting the truth of a scene, but I find them essential. Most of my work involves exposing onto colour transparency film and this is very intolerant of an imbalance between the colour of the light source and that for which it is balanced.

Daylight transparency film is designed to give an accurate rendering of colours when the subject is illuminated by sunlight with a colour temperature of about 5600 degrees Kelvin - approximating to summer sunlight at mid day. But it can vary from as little as 3000K (very red) close to sunset to as much as 20,000K (very blue) in open shade under a blue sky.