Always make sure that you have the correct shutter speed for the appropriate lens or zoom. As a simple rule try to have the same shutter speed or greater than the lens length. Example 17-40 zoom use 1/45-1/60 sec, 200mm zoom use 1/250 sec. With special anti-shake  lenses you can use these lenses with 2 0r 3 stops less depending on the brand or make but you pay a premium for this feature on most lenses. Experiment and you will quickly  find out how low a shutter speed you can use. Also don’t be afraid to increase your iso up to400 or 800 iso if the lighting is poor as many digital cameras have good results up to 800 or more in some cases. If lighting conditions are good use the lowest iso usually 100 as this will give the sharpest results.

How to Correct Over / Under Exposure? There is a couple of ways to correct under or overexposure. You can bracket your exposure so that the camera will take a number of images in increments of a 1/2 or 1/3 stop over and under the correct exposure the camera is telling you it should be, many digital cameras will do this automatically if you set it up. Your best friend here is your histogram if you see the graph bunched to the left or right and not spread over the whole graph the chances are your image is over or under exposed. If the image looks too bright dial in a (-) 1EV, 1.3EV, 2 EV, in exposure compensation to reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor. If your image is to dark dial in a (+) number in exposure compensation to increase the light reaching the sensor. It is important to use your histogram graph/image to determine how much (-) or (+) compensation you require. Use your histogram and get used to seeing images presented in this way and you will quickly see if you have a well exposed image or not. Many digital cameras allow you to switch to different metering from multi-zone, spot metering etc… this can be useful so that the camera can meters from the area of interest rather than taking an average of the entire image, this can be useful where you have many different / opposite lighting conditions, this will tell your camera where you want the exposure reading to be taken from.

Best of luck.

Polarising filters come in two main types circular and linear. The circular screw to the front of the lens and rotate, the benefit of this is that you can see through the viewfinder the effect it has on your scenes as you rotate the outer part of the filter. While the quality is usually good with many manufactures you will require a new polariser for different size lenses or zooms (with different screw sizes). The other main type like cokin or Hood etc. use polarising filters that fit into a holder that hold ¾ filters at the same time and you just change the ring size for different lenses. These are a very cost effective method as you only need to purchase 1 filter type to fit many different size lenses.

What do polarising filters do?

They remove or reduce reflected glare from water and silver or metallic surfaces and they also increase the saturation of blue Sky’s especially useful in landscape photography. They can also reduce Haze. Just remember that they reduce light entering your lens by 2 stops or more. Best results are achieved if you are at 30/45 degrees to your subject. This filter type is a must have for landscape photography.

ND Filters & Graduated Gray & Coloured

If you could only choose 2 filters, these would be the ones to choose .The ND Gray or coloured which reduce light across the whole image in the case of gray ND filters they don’t change the colour rendition. ND graduate filters are one of the most popular filters for landscape photography. As the name suggested it’s a gray or colour (blue for sky) that is graduated normally from top to bottom of the filter. ND filters come in different strengths 0.3 (1 stop) 0.6 (2 stops) and 0.9 (3 stops).They can be combined or added together, as different lighting conditions will require different strength ND or ND graduated filters.

What do ND filters & ND graduates do?

Their main objective is to smooth out or reduce the difference in light between the highlights (normally sky) and the shadow or darker areas. Digital cameras are particularly poor at recording highlights and dark areas in the same image. Film cameras have slightly better latitude in recording highlights and dark areas. This is where ND graduated come in by reducing the difference in light between the light and dark areas. The Dynamic range of the human eye is up to 13 stops ,Film cameras 4/5 stops depending on film type ,but some digital  SLR’s  have only 2 stops, this normally represents itself with highlights (Sky’s) washed out. There have been big efforts to increase the dynamic range of sensors from the major manufactures, watch this space. ND graduates are available in soft or hard types. Use soft where there is not a clear defined change between sky and land .Use hard where there is a clear definition between horizon (sky) and land.

You will be amazed by the improvement to your photography by using these to main types of filters. If it is good enough for professional photographers it’s certainly good enough for you. Learn how to use these filters successfully and take your photography to another level.

Best of luck.