These 4 Filters WILL Enhance Your Filmmaking

What's up, beautiful creators? Today we are talking about four popular filters every Filmmaker Chanel. These are all of the filters that I take with me everywhere. So let's get into it. The first is going to be the Variable Neutral Density Filter, aka your Variable ND Filter. So these filters are actually used to reduce the amount of light that is coming into your lens. So pretty much they're sunglasses for your lens. When you put sunglasses on, it gives you kind of like this darker shade. And that is pretty much what Variable ND Filters do for your lens, which is great if you're always shooting outside and it's just too much light and you don't want to stop down. You want to have a wider aperture. These are great. Usually they come in two to five stops or six to nine stops. The Variable ND that I have on my Sigma 18-35 right now is two to five stops and is the Polar Probe Peter McKinney Variable ND Filter. So for instance, if I was to give you all an example, right now my Variable ND is at two stops, but let's say I was to go to five stops. As you can see, this is five stops and so it's a lot darker. And this would be great if I was shooting outside and I needed a little bit of shade to keep the quality and the exposure correct. However, when we're shooting indoors and I have a big light that is hitting me, the light is doing pretty much the work. And so I want to bring it to two stops. Now to me personally, I think Variable ND Filters do add a more filmic and cinematic vibe. If you shoot without a Variable ND and you was to just get your settings without it, as compared to shooting with one, you can kind of see a difference. They do add an element of quality that I think personally adds to your overall cinematic look. The second filter is going to be the Circular Polarizer Filter. Now, these are great filters to have as well. Pair with your Variable ND Filter in your arsenal because the whole point of the Circular Polarizer Filters is, one, of course, it's going to remove glare, it's going to remove reflections from things such as the water, the sky, glass, whatever that may be. But also it improves your contrast, increase color saturation. So for instance, if you are out there shooting the sky, you might get more bluer skies and your clouds may pop a little bit more and just different things like that. The Circular Polarizer does add about one or two stops. So a lot of times you may not want to use that with a Variable ND Filter because it might make things a little too dark. Also, what I have noticed with trying to use both is that I do get a different color cast when I'm trying to use both. I don't know if it's coming from the Circular Polarizer or if it's coming from the ND Filter, but sometimes it comes off as a more greenish warm tint than the standard color that it should be. So you want to be mindful of that as well if you're trying to stack filters. The third filter is going to be your UV Filters. Now, the whole point of the filter isn't a name. It was to protect your lens against the UV light. However, nowadays, a lot of people just use it as a protection for the lens, for the front of the lens, or if the lens drops, they don't want the glass to break. And so they always add a UV Filter on front of the lens to make sure that their glass is always intact. So it's not necessarily using it for what was intended because a lot of digital cameras nowadays don't really have an issue with UV light. The last filters, and you've probably seen this from everybody, and I have a filter on right now, are the Fusion Filters. These filters come in various strengths and they come in various characteristics. You've probably heard of them before. They're glimmer glass, they're pearlescent. It's going to be your black satin, your ProMids, your soft effects. They can be used to reduce blemishes and wrinkles by reducing resolution. And normally they also add some kind of halation and glow to the overall image, as well as lifting your contrast. So right now I have a Tropic Color or a Prism Dream FX Filter. So where all my highlights are, they're probably creating this really subtle glow because it's not as strong. Like I said, a lot of these can come in different strengths. You can get a quarter ProMids or a half ProMids or a one-eighth ProMids, but essentially they all have their own characteristics and you only kind of play around and see what you want your look to be. I don't like to go too strong, but I have seen on Instagram what people really do like that really strong look. And I think every project tailors to different diffusion and different strengths. So don't get so stuck on always having like this super harsh strength or this super strong strength. It's not always, it doesn't always look the best for a particular project. Subtle sometimes goes a very, very, very long way. Now for me, whenever I'm doing commercial work, like when I did the Target project, I use a Soft FX Filter, which does not have a lot of halation, but it does reduce a lot of the resolution. So you still get more of a softened overall aspect for women or any, you know, like for your blemishes and your wrinkles. Now I like to use a Diffusion Triangle because that allows you to see all of the fusion filters and what characteristics they have. So you have pretty much three different characteristics. You have your halation, you have your contrast, and you have your resolution. And you can see where each filter is going to fall along the lines of the characteristics. So as we can see, ProMids is all the way up there with halation, which is why a lot of people use, a lot of social media content creators use ProMids because they want that halation. However, if you're watching, you know, the shows, the Home Depot shows, where it's like fixer-upper, they don't like halation, but they might use a Soft FX because it does still give you like a softer, diffused look. Or they might use another one that kind of lifts the contrast. So you really want to kind of see what your project is and play around with the diffusion filters, but don't get stuck on one just because other people are doing it because I think there's a method to the madness and you want to be intentional about your diffusion filters. A lot of these filters can be screw-on filters that goes directly onto your lenses, or you can get four by five filters if you want to use a matte box and you want to do better stacking. However, if you do use screw-on filters, you want to make sure that you get step-up rings. Getting these are just important because that way you can just buy one filter and use it on many lenses. So make sure you guys get step-up and step-down rings. My favorite filters are going to be variable ND filters. Like I said, I never really take these filters off. If you're inside and you don't have a lot of light, that's probably the only time that I would, but anytime I'm shooting outside, social content, I am always using a variable ND filter. Also with circular polarizers, these are great if you're going to be shooting anything that's going to have reflection. So door, glass doors, or water, or even shooting outside and you want more contrast and saturation in your overall image, you might want to play around with your circular polarizer. And of course, diffusion filters. I pretty much never take my dream filter off when I'm shooting my YouTube content. However, again, when I'm a DP and I'm shooting certain projects, I'm very intentional about what diffusion I want to use and why. So play around with a lot of these filters, see which ones you like and what fits your overall brand and your overall style. Hopefully this video helped you all. Let me know if it did. Let me know what your favorite filter is. And that was pretty much it for today. Make sure that you like the video, share with your friends, and make sure that you are subscribed to my YouTube channel. Thank you and see you all again soon.