I’ll slap a filter on if I think I’ll get a blown out sky, after trying to adjust the ISO and s/s(no aperture adjust, mini 2 /air 2s)I was told by an old jedi master pic taker, if there’s too much light in your footage there’s very little you can change in post, where as, if the footage is a little dark, at least the detail is still there and can be retrieved in post. I’m no pro by a long way, and still learning, but that reason seems to stand. Ive tried to keep it basic, not wanting to get bogged down in ’ cinematic effect’ thingy, if it happens it happens:grin:. If not, I’ll try something funky in post to ‘liven up’ what may be a dogs backside shot! 
. So, I like the ND filters, just my quids worth…
I see lots and lots of posts about filters!
I get you need filters for video footage in quite harsh light.
My question is do you need filters for just general photography where you can + or - the Exposure Value (EV)?
I suppose what I am saying is for general Raw and Jpg pics do we need any filters?
No
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This.
I agree with the 2 above 
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I find a cpl can be handy on the odd occasion, either for increasing shutter or removing reflections.
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Or even decreasing
Hehe, im in germany just now and sampled one too many beers last night 
Uni back in the day, we had a tech who argued black and white that increasing shutter speed meant just that, increasing the time its open to let in more light.
He was wrong too ;o)
Genieße das Bier
Just expose for the brightest part of the image and bring the shadows out in post, or use the AEB function, or take several shots at different exposures and merge them in post. No need for faffing around with expensive, fiddly, gimmicky filters.
Big fat NO. Waste of time and pennies.
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Occasionally, NDs can useful for stills.
Why would you want to faff around in post when you can very quickly put a ND on the front of the lens?
Much like the flowing water scenario discussed above…. Very bright day in Reno. Needed the full prop disk. Then or never - wasn’t going to happen later in the day when the light dropped. But 100ISO, F22, 1/30th wasn’t slow enough get the full disk. Needed a longer shutter speed but no smaller aperture or lower ISO available to compensate. Simples: slap a ND on the front and 1/15th got the results.
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Nice picture, and a good example.
However I’d have removed the chocks in post so might as well have done the prop while I was at it 
The problem with a polarising filter on a drone is that you can’t rotate the filter to optimise the effect when the drone is in the air. Obviously, this is easy to achieve on a camera. I use polarisers on my camera lenses, but even then, they have to be used with caution on wide angle lenses in particular, as the polarising effect causes dark corners in the sky.
The other thing to bear in mind is that lens manufacturers multicoat their lenses to help to prevent flare and other optical aberrations. Unless the filters you use are manufactured using good quality, optical materials, treated the same way as the lenses, you’ll likely adversely affect the images.
I fully understand using ND filters on a drone to optimise natural blur in videography, but their use in drone photography (to me) is of questionable value. Yes, you can blur the movement of water by slowing the shutter speed, but you also run the risk of generating a blurred image if the drone moves in the air whilst the exposure is being made.
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We are talking drone shots, that is a DSLR shot, tatally different scenario. Drone shots are primarilly landscape shots, no use for filters. I do use filters on my DSLR occasionally for the reasons already discussed, to slow flowing water to get a silky effect etc.
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To add to that, you can also slow down the water with a drone using an ND filter, if that is the look you are looking for. Two examples below:
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Lovely pictures Steve.
Good to see the examples you mentioned in your previous post ;o)
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Thanks Chris @milkmanchris . Appreciated.
It’s not that difficult, at least in my opinion. Recce the subject/landscape, know roughly when the sun will be 90 degrees to it, arrive on site and adjust filter to give required result while in hand. Send bird up, take photo, job done. If any banding occurs take photos with crops in mind to remove banding? But they’re also really useful for removing reflections.
The coatings on decent glass these days is so good I haven’t worried about flare for a long time. In fact even on my old medium format tlrs’, rangefinders and 35mm film I’ve not had much problem with flare to be honest, even when using various filters.
I use ND, grads, and coloured filters (cheap ones) on all my cameras. Colours used are green yellow, orange and red but they’re mainly used for black and white, and infrared. But still no flare. And thats with up to three filters stacked.
I do agree that ND filters for drone photography are pretty much useless unless trying to blur movement, but this has to be done on a calm day with very little wind and is very achievable in my opinion.
But at the end of the day it’s all about different strokes for different folks, right?
Great examples Steve
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