Filters

Let's hear it for filters. There small, light, cheap and simple, but screw the right one onto the front of your camcorder lens and you can transform your video images. In fact, of all the accessories you can add to your videomaker's kit, filters deliver the most dramatic- and the most cost-effective-visual improvement.

Here's how you can use filters to make your videos more compelling.

A Short History

Filters go back nearly as far as the moving image itself. As you know, in the beginning most film was black and white. Black and white film renders every color as a shade of gray, and sometimes renders the same gray for different colors.

Take colors red and green, for instance. Shoot a black and white photograph of Santa Claus in a dense stand of Christmas trees and you'll lose him, because his red suit records as the same shade of gray as the green pine needles.

A similar problem occurs with the color blue. Black and white cinematographers shoot deep blue skies full of glorious thunderheads, only to develop pictures of dull overcast. Why? Because the film renders the white clouds and the blue sky as equally light shades of gray.

Enter the filter, which can modify the way black and white film renders colors. For example, a heavy orange filter makes blue light record a medium-dark gray, so that skies look "normal" and white clouds stand out. A green filter renders more pleasing flesh tones-for Caucasians, that is.

For years, Hollywood used the "Hattie McDaniel" filter, named for the brilliant actress who won an Academy Award for Gone With the Wind, to lighten the appearance of African-American actors. This was partly to cope with the contrast problems of lighting dark faces but also achieved the crudely racist purpose of "improving" darker complexions.

With the invention of color film came new filters, developed to modify the way in which colors were captured. These are the same filters used by videomakers …