Filters and such......

I'm relatively new at photography and wanted to know what filters I need for taking photos in the middle of the day. Hard light seems to be a big issue I hear and wanted to know who uses what in these conditions, I still need a hood, and plan on getting a "nifty fifty" soon. I currently use the stocker lens (55-18).

It depends what you're photographing but a CPL and maybe a couple different levels of Neutral Density would be a good place to start.

I agree with woods289. Get 3 ND filters maybe a 2 stop, 3-4 stop, and 6-8 stop.

Get a CPL (circular polarizing filter) Get a good one and you will love it in daytime shooting.

What are you trying to achieve? For all we know, fill light from a good flash may be what you're really looking for.

mike_d wrote in post #10683340
What are you trying to achieve? For all we know, fill light from a good flash may be what you're really looking for.

To take good pics under harsh light conditions.

winters19 wrote in post #10683392
To take good pics under harsh light conditions.

Can you post some examples of where you feel you or your gear fell short?

When I hear "harsh light" I think hard shadow lines on people's faces which says one of two things to me: Take the picture in open shade or add fill light if you can't move the subject.

Well, you've got some back lighting there which will usually make the camera underexpose your subject. If you lower your exposure to the point where the sky is blue, then the subject gets very underexposed. If you properly expose the subject, then you blow out the sky. This is a common problem. Overall, that's not a bad exposure given the situation. If you want the sky to be blue, you'd have to add light from your flash to light the subject.

I agree with the others that fill flash is the only way to bring the above shot into "balance" -- sometimes the blown background is OK, sometimes not, but if you want to avoid it fill flash is the way.

Circular polarizers can bring your whole exposure down a bit but their main purpose is to bring some highlights down a bit, and they can lend a saturation effect to some colors, such as a blue sky, but the effect is dependent on the direction of the sun and also they won't do anything for that particular image.

Neutral Density Filters are meant to lower the exposure for a given shutter/aperture/ISO setting. They can be useful for specific things, such as allowing a slow shutter speed to show "motion" in moving water or with pedestrians or moving vehicles, without sacrificing other elements to keep the scene from being overexposed. Again, no use in your photo above.

Graduated Neutral Density filters darken a portion of the screen then gradually lighten until there is no darkening (full exposure). This can be useful with say a landscape scene with a foreground that you want to "properly" expose but a bright sky that you want to keep from blowing (as would happen if you properly expose for the foreground. If used properly GND filters can be very effective, but realize that you will have to deal with features on the horizon level that may come out poorly with that type of filter. Now, the shot you show has a similar challenge (bright sky) but the composition would not be helped by a GND.

Filters can have a use even in the digital world, but something to bear in mind is that giving in to the temptation to buy "cheap" filters is a big mistake. Inexpensive Neutral Density filters, for example, often have an undesirable color tint to them. Cheap UV ("protection") filters tend to cause glare -- so much so that many people just don't use them unless really bad conditions warrant them.

Hope this helps some!