When taking colour photographs in bright sunlight, especially by the sea or in the mountains, ultra-violet rays and the brightness of the sky throw out the picture’s overall colour balance.
The Skylight “filters out” the excess bluish tone, improving the overall clarity of the photograph while helping to restore the film’s natural colour balance. It also keeps skin tones free of colour reflections from nearby objects such as tree shade.
Skylight filters are available in two strengths 1A and 1B, the latter being a slightly stronger pink colour.
Many photographers buy a skylight filter for each lens and leave them screwed on to protect the lenses’ front elements.
Skylight filters are available in round type that screw into the lens in ever size imaginable. They are also made by Cokin for the square filter system, and Hoyarex and the likes used to make them for their systems.
Links to buy
Hoyarex 011 Filter
Cokin A230
The top ten filters you should own will obviously vary from person to person but our choice is most definitely the following:
- 1 Circular Polariser (glare reduction and colour saturation)
- 2 Grey Grad 4x (balance sky brightness)
- 3 Skylight (protects lens)
- 4 Neutral Density x4 (reduces overall exposure)
- 5 81A (warms up skin tones)
- 6 Close up +4 (for the macro shots)
- 7 Grey Grad 2x (a weaker variation on 2)
- 8 Neutral Density x8 (a stronger variation on 4)
- 9 Softar style diffuser (best softener for when you cant be bothered doing it in Photoshop)
- 10 Star 8 (Adds star burst to shot – great for jewellery)
Good selection? Let us know your top ten.
The skylight filter has a slight pink tint
The Skylight filter has been around for decades and is one of the most popular filters. It has a slight pink tint which is used to reduce blue haze in colour photography. This was essential for film camera owners but digital camera users can correct the problem easily using an image editing program.
The Skylight filter does not affect exposure, so some photographers screw one on the front of each of their lenses as protection for the front element.
There are some photographers who counter this action, suggesting that the filter will degrade quality. And it’s true if you put on a cheapy plastic option, but adding a high quality Japanese multi-coated filter will give minimal degradation to the image. Any change will certainly not be noticeable to the naked eye. And the advantage of having a skylight filter (or UV) is you maintain a clean lens which would cost much more to replace than a scratched filter.
If you use a skylight filter you can keep it attached all the time, but be careful if you add other filters as the extended depth could cause vignetting on wide angle lenses. Some manufacturers such as Hoya make slim versions to prevent this.
