It depends on the type of filter you're talking about, and what you mean by 'enhanced'. A colored filter (or sunglasses, for that matter) is going to add a color cast to the image, although you would not notice if you're using automatic white balance (which balances to a neutral gray and thus tends to remove/reduce the effect of a colored filter). Personally, I'm not a fan of 'rose-colored glasses' (or any other color, for that matter), and my sunglasses are neutral density - they reduce the amount of light evenly at all wavelengths, i.e. they are 'gray'.


I suspect you may be thinking of polarized sunglasses, vs. 'colored'. Polarization 'enhances' and 'adds clarity' because it removes out-of-plane reflections and thus increases contrast. A circular polarizing filter for your lens will have the same effect, and is a very useful filter (but not one to be left on all the time, as it results in a loss of 1.5-2 stop of light).


In a nutshell, when discussing filters for dSLR lenses, the only ones to consider are:



  • UV/clear (for protection)
  • Circular polarizing (to reduce reflections, useful for foliage, bluer skies, etc.)
  • Neutral density (reduce the amount of light, useful for slow shutter speeds for waterfalls, etc., and for shooting outdoor portraits with wide apertures)
  • Graduated neutral density (for unevenly lit landscape shots, where the sky is much brighter than the ground)




Those are really the only filters where the effect cannot be easily reproduced in post-processing (debatable for graduated ND filters - can be done in post, but it's a lot of work; HDR is another option in those situations).


Hope that helps...


--John