There are a wide variety of lenses and filters available to increase the range of options you have for shooting a photograph.

Note that not all digital cameras come with the ability to attach different lenses and filters. Check the manual for your camera.

Some lens types include :

• Wide Angle – Fills more of the scene in your photo. Use for indoor shots or a landscape vista.
• Telephoto – Useful for getting close. A Telephoto lens is basically a better optical zoom
• Fish Eye – This lens gets even more of the scene into your photo, but adds distortion to the photo. Straight lined objects at the edge of the image will tend to look curved.

Filters include :

• Polarizing
• Soft Focus
• Cooling/Warming
• Graduated

A polarizing filter can be the most useful filter to own. A Polarizing filter can deepen the color and contrast in the sky, eliminate glare from water or reflective surfaces, or cut through fog like haze. Soft Focus filters generate more diffused looks for romantic, moody, atmospheric, foggy or glowing effects in your shots.

Cooling filters add more blue to an image giving a psychological effect of calming or serenity in the final image. Warming filters cut out excess blue in an overcast sky to add more reddish tones to the image and make your photos look less harsh.

Finally, graduated lenses help for scenes that have a huge difference in light level – eg late in the day when the sky is still bright, but the foreground is in shadow.

See examples of filters at work, plus explanations of which filters you should use and should not use - and one that should never be used. All in my "Digital Photo Secrets" book.

Next Time : Revealed - the object that's everywhere that can help take stunning shots.