Canon® EOS Digital Photography Photo Workshop

7.5. FILTERS WORTH CONSIDERING

Lens filters — whether they're dropped in at the back-end of a long super-telephoto lens or screw-mounted onto the front of the most common lenses — can be very useful for a variety of photographic purposes and can even save you a lot of money in the event of a lens accident. From colored filters to creative-effects filters to clear filters designed to reduce environmental haze, there are many types available for your Canon dSLR (see 7-4). The next sections take a look at some of the more common filters and why you might want to give them a try.

OKAY PHOTOGRAPHERS, MOUNT UP! The photography world is rife with clever inventions and devices allowing you a great amount of versatility to configure and mount cameras and lenses on virtually anything, from a car window to a tree. For example, the oddly named Groofwin Pod (it stands for "ground-roof-window") gives you a highly stable platform to photograph from while attached to a car window or a vehicle roof or rack, or placed on the ground. This is really useful if you're on a photo safari in Africa where most of your shooting is done from a vehicle, for example, and is a good alternative to other specialized heads onto which you mount your camera on a car window. When you dare venture out of the car to photograph the lion's pride, you'll probably want to climb a tree and use the Joby Gorillapod — which provides a way to wrap flexible, gripping tripod legs around virtually any object. Then there's the ...