Some more general questions

Hi, I can not tell you how much I appreciate the help I have received on this forum so far. It has certainly helped me venture into film photography after spending awhile in digital. I have a few more general questions:

1)Can you clean filters/polarizers with the same cleaning fluid as a lens? Can you clean them more often?

2)Is there a filter that is used for florescent lighting?

3)The specifications for my lens are F4-5.6. Yet when I have the camera on aperture priority sometimes, it goes up to 22. Is this just the maximum camera settings, or the lens settings?

4)Are there any general purpose-type filter you recommend for mixed lighting (i.e. compact fluorescents and incandescents, LCDs, etc.)?c

5)Besides the filters mentioned so far, are there any filters that are used rather often and what purpose do they serve?

6)I'm a bit confused about the concept of Exposure Compensation. It is on my digital camera but I never used it and I imagine it's quite different in film. Does it actually increase or decrease the amount of light needed to obtain the proper exposure (i.e. a change in shutter speed/aperture), or does it merely brighten or darken the image after it's been exposed?

Thanks as always!

And if I may add one:

7)When the SLR is in storage, should you leave the lens in the camera or take it out?

marylandphoto said:

Hi, I can not tell you how much I appreciate the help I have received on this forum so far. It has certainly helped me venture into film photography after spending awhile in digital. I have a few more general questions:

1)Can you clean filters/polarizers with the same cleaning fluid as a lens? Can you clean them more often?

2)Is there a filter that is used for florescent lighting?

3)The specifications for my lens are F4-5.6. Yet when I have the camera on aperture priority sometimes, it goes up to 22. Is this just the maximum camera settings, or the lens settings?

4)Are there any general purpose-type filter you recommend for mixed lighting (i.e. compact fluorescents and incandescents, LCDs, etc.)?c

5)Besides the filters mentioned so far, are there any filters that are used rather often and what purpose do they serve?

6)I'm a bit confused about the concept of Exposure Compensation. It is on my digital camera but I never used it and I imagine it's quite different in film. Does it actually increase or decrease the amount of light needed to obtain the proper exposure (i.e. a change in shutter speed/aperture), or does it merely brighten or darken the image after it's been exposed?

Thanks as always!

Click to expand...

1) Yes! You can clean filters as often as needed - if you always have a filter over your lens, the filter may need cleaning often, the lens quite possibly never.

2) Yes! Tiffen FL-D or similar is made for shooting with daylight balance color film under fluorescent lighting.

3) The numbers you mention are the maximum apertures at the widest and longest ends respectively of your zoom lens. Any marked apertures on the lens will relate to the wide end, so if your largest aperture changes from f4 to f5.6 as you zoom, the smallest one will change from f22 to f32. If your camera has a built-in meter, it will make allowance for this.

4) No - one filter can only make one correction. Pictures will look better if any uncorrected light is too warm - for example, if a scene is lit mainly by fluorescent light with some incandescent bulbs, filter for the fluorescent light and let the bulbs appear too warm. "Fluorescent" here means long fluorescent tubes - the new energy-saving bulbs are much closer to daylight and will probably need only an 81 filter (81A, 81B, 81C) for correction.

5) Not for color - b+w is another story. Here you might well have a yellow, green, orange and red.

6) Exposure compensation works both ways, + for more exposure, - for less. It works the same way with digital and film, except that you can't see the result immediately with film! Examples of compensation might be a subject which is mostly light tones (would need 2 stops more than meter reading), mostly dark tones (about 2 stops less), a portrait against the light (might need a stop or so more), etc.

Regards,

David

Missed your PS - I would say keep the lens on, put the whole camera and lens in a bag with some silica gel sachets and seal it.

Do NOT clean your filters with the same fluid you use for the lens.
You WILL damage them as they are often manufactured of different material (e.g. resin not glass)
and so is their coating.
There is a special fluid for filters.
As long as you are careful not to touch them (which unfortunately is easy to do when handling them),
or wet them (e.g. rain, sea splash), you should stick to blowers and anti-static brushes.

If you use the camera's internal meter, then generally you would not need to compensate for the filter, if you are metering with the filter in place.
If your filters are glass, you could use the same fluid as on your lens, otherwise, the filter's manufacturer should provide specifications of what kinds of cleaning fluids are acceptable.
You should never put the fluid directly on any optical surface, but put a drop or two on a lens tissue, then apply that to the lens, very gently.
Only clean the filter or lens if there is something visible that doesn't belong, if it is't broken, don't fix it.

arigram said:

Do NOT clean your filters with the same fluid you use for the lens.
You WILL damage them as they are often manufactured of different material (e.g. resin not glass)
and so is their coating.
There is a special fluid for filters.
As long as you are careful not to touch them (which unfortunately is easy to do when handling them),
or wet them (e.g. rain, sea splash), you should stick to blowers and anti-static brushes.

Click to expand...

Just to be clear - I would without hesitation use any method which I use to clean a lens for filters, too. I use mainly (dry) microporous cloths or (dry) lens tissue together with a "huff" of breath condensation, for the occasional stubborn mark I use Kodak lens cleaning fluid. For both lenses and filters (glass or resin), I would avoid impregnated (wet) tissues or alcohol-based cleaning sprays, which are great for eye-glass lenses but I feel are too strong for either filters or photographic lenses. I don't use resin filters anyway - among glass filters, I have found Hoya filters to be not very resistant to cleaning, so I avoid these too.

Regards,

David

marylandphoto said:

1)Can you clean filters/polarizers with the same cleaning fluid as a lens? Can you clean them more often?

Click to expand...

I use the same fluid and such on my lenses and filters. You can clean them more often but unless they get really dirty it's not necessary.

marylandphoto said:

2)Is there a filter that is used for florescent lighting?

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There are filters for use with flourescent lighting. Lighting systems as well, such as the Videssence Lighting system, for example. I don't use this system, but it might give you somewhere to start.

marylandphoto said:

3)The specifications for my lens are F4-5.6. Yet when I have the camera on aperture priority sometimes, it goes up to 22. Is this just the maximum camera settings, or the lens settings?

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Your camera will shoot at the settings that are available through your lens. Ie.) if your lens' maximum aperture if f/22, your camera cannot shoot at f/45.

marylandphoto said:

5)Besides the filters mentioned so far, are there any filters that are used rather often and what purpose do they serve?

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Depending on what you shoot most often. I shoot a lot of landscape, water, and still lifes indoors/outdoors. I shoot black and white film exclusively. So I carry, graduated neutral density filters (0.5 filter effect and 2.5 filter effect for the shaded area of the filter), full neutral density filters (one stop, two stop and three stop), a polarizer for reflection/glare on non-metallic surfaces, and color correction filters for contrast control with shooting B&W (red, orange, yellow, green and blue).

marylandphoto said:

6)I'm a bit confused about the concept of Exposure Compensation. It is on my digital camera but I never used it and I imagine it's quite different in film. Does it actually increase or decrease the amount of light needed to obtain the proper exposure (i.e. a change in shutter speed/aperture), or does it merely brighten or darken the image after it's been exposed?

Click to expand...

The two are interrelated. It augments the amount of exposure in order to produce a lighter/darker image. It is basically an automatic bracketting mode. If you are not sure of the light but wanna get it right, you might manually shoot your shot, then decrease exposure by one stop, fire again, then increase exposure by one stop over the original reading and fire a third frame.

As usual, all of your time is much appreciated. Thanks.