Today’s Post by Joe Farace
For some time, I’ve been writing a series called Stupid Photographer’s Tricks that for some reason, always seem to involve attractive women. It’s not always “always” though; sometime it involves photographing cars…
The first Good Guys car show that I went to several years ago was held at Pikes Peak International Raceway and Mary and I attended along with some friends. I also brought along my Canon !D Mark II N and a few lenses, including the EF 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 EF-S.
When it comes to the practice of using UV or Skylight camera filters for lens protection, there are those photographers who love them and those that hate’em. Most purists don’t like any kind of filter because they don’t want anything coming between reality and the image on their exposed film or image sensor. Filter fans, and I’ll confess to being one, don’t worry about resolution charts and like to have fun with their photography.
How I Made this Photo: I photographed this low rider at the Good Guys car show that was held in Fountain, Colorado several years ago. Camera used was a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N with EF 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 EF-S lens. Exposure was 1/320 sect f/9 and ISO 100. Photoshop’s Motion Blur filter was added to a background layer, where the car was erased on the top layer. Image tweaked in Vivenza.
If you’re on the fence, here are a few reasons for using camera filters for protection.
- When working under difficult environmental conditions, such as blowing dust or sand, the right filter will protect your expensive camera lens.
- A UV filter is helpful when photographing mountain and marine scenes and can even prevent you from a spontaneous outbreak of stupidity.
For a short time, I was persuaded by the perfectionist’s argument and was shooting at the aforementioned car show with that very same EF 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 EF-S lens attached to my camera. While walking through the trade show area the front element of my lens came in contact with a wire display rack. S-c-r-a-t-c-h. That was the end of my flirtation with perfection.
And like the lens I wrecked that was described in my first Stupid Photographer’s Tricks I sold the lens on eBay, describing the scratch with close-up photos, and surprisingly didn’t take too big of a hit.
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