lenses for snow

[dan76n]

hi all,
As i have already listed, im intersted in filming in the snow.My research on this site has got me down to 2 issues.
1. I should use either a polorised or Neutral density lense filter.
What is the difference of the two and is one more suited to the snow than the other?
2. I have noticed a wide angle lense seems to be another choice for filming in the snow, what benifits does this offer and can you attatch another filter to this? EG wide angle with polorised filter.
Thanks for all the help!
Danny

[Brian110507]

A polarising filter 'polarises' the light entering your camera lens and you have to rotate it while looking through your viewfinder to set it to the best affect - what it does is to remove the glare and 'high spots' which you often get when the sun bounces off snow and ice, glass and water, it can also be used to remove reflections from the surface of a body of water.

A Neutral density filter simply cuts down all light reaching your camera lens - it is basically similar to just holding a piece of dark glass over your lens. This is useful as sun and snow together can be particularly bright and may cause over -exposure to your video.

A wide angle lens has no particular benefit in snow, but is a useful accessory as it allows you to see the much wider picture, one of the problems with most modern camcorders is that everyone seems to be fixated with telephoto and this can often only be acheived at the expense of the low end and a wide angle lens will help to give a picture which is perhaps nearer to what you see with the naked eye.

You can add filters and wide angle lens at the same time.

Unaware of the type of camera you're using -but in general you should go for the polarising filter. Somewhat similar but less effective are the basic UV and Sunlight filters that you should have attached your lens already (scraches on your lens will cost you much more). There will be problems thou, if your lens rotates as it focuses, since with polarise-filter it must be in fixed position as beejaycee mentioned on how it fuctions.
Forget the neutral grey. Your autoexposer will neutralise it.

That's the reason also why one may figure wide-angle would suit better for snow shootings too. As the frame isn't fixed on just on snow, lightmeter will read you better ratings. That is (english isn't my native language so I might not be so clear to explane this) if you aim your camera on just white, camera industry once in the -20 agreed a standart of 18%grey. They figured that since most of the time we shoot people -the avarage white coloured person is about 18% grey... blaa blaa blaa -and so what your camera will try to do is adjust the white to 18%grey. ..IF you have some bits of anything else -it makes things less damaging.
=What you need to do is open your aperture in all cases, filter or not.
Sorry got to go.