AO2- Filters best for Landscape Photography and why

AO2- Filters that are best for Landscape Photography

Gradient Filter:

Gradient filters are filters that are used to balance out the exposure, especially in landscape. This is because within landscape photography the photographers would need to balance out the bright and light sky compared the more darker land. So to do this they would use a gradient filter, this is just a filter that has a darker top section which fades to a see through bottom part. The darker top section is for the camera to correctly expose the image without having an over exposed sky. 

There are two main types of this filter, these are soft and hard edge gradient filters. They are both extremely useful, however tend to be used for slightly different things. For example the hard edge filter would be better suited for when the sky hits an horizon in an image, and the sharp contrast from the bright sky to dark land would mean that a hard more noticeable gradient filter would be necessary. Where as the soft edge filter would be better suited for when there isn't a specific abrupt contrast in colours, for example the mountain to sky would be a less of a contrast because of the shape of the mountains and the lightness of the colour of the mountains.

Neutral Density Filter:

A neutral density filter is a filter that is used to reduce the amount of the light coming into an image, it does this without effecting the colours of the image.  These tend to be a clear or grey filter. This type of filter allows the photographer to focus on the aperture, shutter speed or ISO of the image without having to worry about it becoming overexposed. 

This type of filter is often used when a photographer wants to capture the motion blur, this is because the filter allows the photographer to have a long shutter speed without having too much light being let into the lens throughout the capturing of the image. 

Gradient Neutral Density Filter:

Gradient filters are filters that are used to balance out the exposure, especially in landscape. This is because within landscape photography the photographers would need to balance out the bright and light sky compared the more darker land. So to do this they would use a gradient filter, this is just a filter that has a darker top section which fades to a see through bottom part. 

Where as a neutral density filter is a filter that is used to reduce the amount of the light coming into an image, it does this without effecting the colours of the image.

So a gradient neutral filter would be a combination of the two filters above. So it would be a filter that wouldn't effect the colours of the image, however it would help make the sky or top of the image be correctly exposed. It also means that this type of filter allows the photographer to capture motion blur and not have to worry about overexposure of the sky or any other parts of the image.