Circular polarizer - eliminated reflections and make skies bluer
Neutral Density - great for capturing waterfalls and other long exposures
UV - Block UV light and protect your lense.
my advice is to go with the Cokin or Lee range of squre filters, less hassle and a reasonable price, get also a graduated grey good of contast reduction in bald skies.
In the Authority challenge I got 2 comments advising me to use filters to prevent my sky from getting blown out. One said to try a circular polarizing filter and the other was to try a ND filter. I am really a beginner and found it very confusing when I was looking at filters to know what would work with my camera. I know there are many people on this site with the same camera, the Canon Digital Rebel, with the original lens. Can someone advise me about this? Thanks so much. Maybe Santa can bring me a filter for Christmas.
any filter with a 58mm thread will fit the kit lense for the drebel.
if you shop with this in mind when buying lenses - you can maybe use some of the specialty filters on more than one lense, and save some money. i have three lenses with 58mm threads. ( although this isn't the priority when shopping for lenses, but a bonus if the lense happens to be the same size thread ).
priority 1 - UV filter 58mm ( protects the expensive glass in the lense )
priority 2 - Circular polarizer - 58mm ( this will lessen glare from things besides metal, and increase the saturation of colors - you turn it to get the desired effect ) you can stack this on top of the UV filter - the polarizer will use about 2/3 a stop of light depending on the brand.
priority 3 - Graduated ND filter - 58mm ( this blocks some light from only 1/2 the lense - so you can shoot sort of two exposures at once. as mentioned to aid in proper exposure of a bright sky, and darker land - for instance )
priority 4 - Non graduated ND filter - middle of the available range 58mm ( these block some light from entering the lense - letting you use a slower shutter speed in high light situations to capture motion blur )
you can get varying degrees of darknes with these, and stack these as well to block more or less light, and increase shutter speed more or less. i mention getting a mid range one first, and add to them as you see fit.
other than these you shouldn't really need any others.
obviously the more the filter costs - the better the quality of the glass, and the coatings used - giving better image results.
