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Even with a good lens, the glare might be intense or the lighting harsh, and you might need an accessory to control the light reaching the lens. The best camera filter gives you the flexibility to use slow shutter speeds or capture reflective surfaces without degradation in image quality.
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The best camera filter is lightweight, and you can use it to add effects to your photos or control the brightness without a significant increase in the weight of the camera setup. The following filters are water resistant, and you can use them in trying environmental conditions.
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Best Overall Camera Filter
Brand:
Freewell 82mm Magnetic Quick Swap
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Best Polarizing Camera Filter
Brand:
Hoya 52mm Fusion
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Best Camera Filter for UV Light Protection
Brand:
Gobe 67mm UV Filter
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Material:
Optical Glass
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Material:
Optical Glass
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Material:
Optical Glass
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Coating Description:
Multi Coating
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Coating Description:
Multi Coating
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Coating Description:
Nano Coating
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4.5
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4.6
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4.6
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The Freewell 82mm Magnetic Quick Swap is a flexible polarizing filter that is water resistant, making it ideal for use with weather-resistant lenses when capturing exterior images of a property in a snowy environment.
Unlike the Gobe 67mm, this filter magnetically gets attached to your lens, enhancing the ease of attaching and detaching from the lens. If capturing the entire property from a distance, you might want to capture the blue skies to make the images look natural.
However, if there is plenty of ambient lighting, the reflections and glare might wash out the vivid color of your property and the blue skies, giving the final image a washed-out highlight.
This filter helps block polarized light, eliminating reflections and glare, which allows you to capture more natural blue skies with better contrast and color.
Like the Hoya 52mm, this filter features a multi-layer coating, protecting your lens against smudges and fingerprints. However, if the filter accidentally falls off during a hike, its magnetic design makes it challenging to remove the dirt.
The Hoya 52mm Fusion is a high-quality filter that uses optical glass in its construction, ensuring less color shifting and uniform light distribution throughout your image.
Keeping in mind that there are chances of having reflective walls due to the interior lighting in a room, like the Gobe 67mm UV filter, this filter helps reduce reflections from non-metallic surfaces, allowing you to capture detailed images of reflective walls and doors without reflections.
On top of that, it features 18 layers of super Hoya Multi-Coated (HMC) coating, which helps eliminate glare and reflections from the back and front of your camera lens, improving contrast and color saturation on your images.
Like the NiSi 62mm ND1000, this filter is water-resistant and doesn’t limit the flexibility of using a weather-resistant lens when shooting exterior images of a property in a dusty backyard. When adjusting the filter, oils from your skin can get onto it, causing smudges or fingerprints that can affect light entrance.
Luckily, this filter is stain resistant, and you don’t have to clean it after several times of use. However, unscrewing the filter from the camera can be challenging for beginner photographers.
The Gobe 67mm UV Filter is an ultra-slimmed magnalium-rimmed filter that ensures an ergonomic grip and a smoothened rotation, enhancing faster and more precise adjustments.
The ultra-slim design also helps you avoid vignetting at the corners of your images, especially when using a wide-angle camera lens. Since filters are designed from different materials, some are low-quality and fade after a relatively short period of use.
Like the Hoya 52mm, this lens features a sturdy, durable optical glass construction that doesn’t fade like paper filters. Typically, when shooting in strong lighting conditions, the light might get reflected in a camera lens resulting in flare and ghosting, which lowers your image quality.
This filter features a 16-layers nano-coating that helps minimize flare and ghosting for improved color balance. When replacing the lens cap, you can accidentally touch the surface of the filter with the cap, causing scratches.
Fortunately, like the NiSi 62mm ND1000, the filter is scratch and fingerprint resistant, relieving you from having to replace it every time. However, the lens threads are fewer than the filter ring thread, which might result in fitting issues.
The Nisi 62mm ND1000 is a 10-stop neutral density lens filter that allows you to blur out a moving subject in the frame, making it ideal for capturing exterior images of a commercial property with many passers-by. Usually, introducing some strong lighting might result in blown-out highlights.
This filter allows you to take bright images when using flashes, thanks to the 10-stop filter strength that prevents overexposure. Typically, using bright apertures and slow shutter speeds when capturing motion blur in ambient lighting might result in overexposure.
The filter helps reduce the light intensity, allowing you to use longer shutter speeds and bright apertures when capturing water bodies like swimming pools. Like the Gobe 67mm, this filter features an ultra-slim frame with knurled edges, enhancing the ease of grip and installation.
Using low-quality filters with narrow apertures makes your camera prone to the infrared light that casts unwanted red colors on your images.
Fortunately, unlike the other filters on my list, this filter features an infrared protection coating, which eliminates infrared light to enhance the natural colors. However, the coating sometimes peels off in a spray pattern, resulting in different-sized dots in the final image.
Like camera lenses, filters come in various styles and specifications designed for use under specific
The table below provides you with a quick highlight of the critical features you shouldn’t ignore when choosing a camera filter.
| Filters | Size (mm) | Weight (Pounds) | Filter Type |
| Hoya 52mm Fusion | 52 | 0.09 | Polarizing |
| Gobe 67mm UV Filter | 67 | 0.02 | Ultraviolet |
| Nisi 62mm ND1000 | 62 | 0.18 | Neutral density |
| Freewell 82mm Magnetic Quick Swap | 82 | 0.64 | Polarizing |
Camera lenses come in varying sizes, depending on the construction quality, brand, and model, and whether the lens is designed for the micro-four-third crop factor of a full-frame camera. Since you will mount the filter on the front part of the lens, the size of the lens directly impacts the filter size.
The important dimension of the lens to consider when choosing the filter size is the diameter, not the length of the lens barrel. Before buying the filter, check the lens diameter size to ensure the filter diameter matches.
In most lenses, the diameter is indicated by a geometric symbol on the barrel, followed by a number that indicates the diameter in millimeters. For instance, if the lens barrel is indicated Ø52, you should use a 52mm filter such as the Hoya 52mm Fusion One.
Filters come in a wide array of types, with the common ones being UV and Skylight, Polarizing, Neutral Density, Hard-Edge Graduated ND, Soft-Edge Graduated ND, Reverse Graduated ND, Close-Up Filters, Colored Filters, and Special Effect Filters. Usually, each type is tailored to combat some issues with the lighting or to add certain effects to the photos.
For instance, polarizing filters such as the Freewell Magnetic Quick Swap helps to reduce the glare and surface reflections to improve the contrast and color tones of the photos when shooting interior pictures in harsh lights or backlit conditions.
On the other hand, a neutral density filter such as the NiSi 62mm limits the amount of light reaching the lens when shooting in harsh ambient lighting. This allows you to achieve motion blur effects using long exposures or background blur by opening the aperture wide without overexposing the photos.
Unlike camera lenses that are normally circular, the filters come in a wide range of shapes, such as circular, square, or rectangular. The different shapes tend to affect the way you can mount the filter. For instance, rectangular and square filters require a holder to hold them in front of the lens.
In most cases, these filters suit landscape and exterior
Usually, circular filters such as the Freewell Magnetic Quick Swap are straightforward to use as you can mount them directly onto the front of the lens. You also have drop-in filters that are usually inserted into a compartment around the rear end of the lens.
Camera filters can be made of gelatin, plastic or colored glass. The different materials have different sturdiness and the ability to withstand physical impacts and weather conditions. For instance, some materials can easily fade when exposed to the UV rays of the sun.
As a result, different filters offer different levels of protection to your lens. If your reason for getting the filter is to improve your photos or add effects, you might not need to consider the level of protection the filter provides to the lens.
However, if you want a filter to protect your lens from dust and elements, consider getting one that offers protection without affecting the image quality. For example, the Gobe 37mm UV Lens Filter is designed with optical glass to protect your lens from UV rays without affecting the image quality.
Although most filters are lightweight, they are mounted at the front part of the lens. When you are taking pictures handheld, added weight on the front part can require more energy to stabilize the setup horizontally.
Generally, filters are of different sizes and thicknesses and are made of different materials. As a result, the weight of the filters varies across the board. A large filter constructed with optical glass, such as the Freewell Magnetic Quick Swap, is generally heavier.
You can get the right exposure when using a filter and a separate exposure meter by adding the filter factor to the f-stops. For example, if you use a good quality polarizing filter with a factor of 2, increase the metered exposure by two f-stops.
It’s advisable to clean the filters the same way you clean the lenses. You can wipe away the dirt using a clean microfiber cloth. For smudges and fingerprints, you can clean using tissue and lens-cleaning liquid.
Arguably, a polarizing filter is better than an ND filter as it does what is challenging to achieve using the camera setting. Typically, the polarizing filter reduces the surface reflections and intensifies the colors. On the other hand, the ND filter only blocks light, which you can do by increasing the shutter speed.
Filters come in varying designs, shapes, and construction qualities that determine their effect on the resulting images. The best camera filter can help to improve the overall versatility of your camera, making the camera usable in harsh interior lighting and capturing reflective windows and walls.
