I recently purchased an Olympus D-500L and added a 43mm UV filter to protect the lens from scratches, dust, etc. There are other filters, ie. neutral density, polarizing, color correction, star, etc. available. Will any of these work on a digital camera? I am particularly interested in color correction filters. I was told they would not work well because the camera automatically tries to correct the color. Any information would be appreciated.

-- Ray Doyle (rayd@earthlink.net), June 09, 1998

Answers

I saw that nobody had answered this, so decided to take a swipe at it myself...

Essentially all digital cameras include some sort of automatic "white balance" function, which tries to correct for any color cast in the illumination, and the Oly D-500L is no exception. Some cameras also provide the ability to select pre-set color balance settings, which disables the automatic white balance and sets the camera up for a particular type of illumination, such as incandescent, sunlight, etc. Unfortunately, the D-500L isn't in this latter category (I have a D-600L myself, and just checked it.) This means that the camera is going to try to compensate for whatever color correction you add to it. (You can of course, work on the images post-exposure in Photoshop to achieve much the same effect.)

Other filters such as neutral density, polarizing, star, etc should work fine.

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), July 17, 1998.