Filters, Keep or Sell

Hi all, hope you all had a nice christmas and have a good new year when it comes.

Over the last 18 months I've done a fair bit of business on eBay and in the process aquired about 50 Cokin A series filters, various rings and holders, but I have never got round to using them.
The question is, are there any merits in this digital age to keeping and using them, I use C1 and PS CS2 for my workflow. Is it better to shoot with the filters rather than do any fancy stuff in the post processing (I do have and use polarisers, these are not up for grabs).
I would like your thoughts on this before I decide to stick them up on eBay or keep and use them.

You can do most things in post-processing, and that's what I do.

The exceptions are the use of polarizers (which you have already mentioned), the use maybe of an IR filter and perhaps any filter intended to reduce haze and light scatter.

Filters do sell quite well on eBay, so that's not a bad idea for any surplus to requirements. It might be just what someone else is looking for.

Well, I make very good use of Cokin P series filters - but only the following:
ND, ND grad, Circ Polariser. The ND grads are extremely useful in balancing the lighting out and capturing in one image - controlling the exposure, even for RAW.

I'm not sure I'd use any of the others (like Tobacco Grad, etc, etc) since most other things can be done in PS.

Matt

Thanks for your replies, much as I thought but wanted to be sure. Will put them up in a day or so.

I agree with Matt.

I didn't have any filters before I bought my DS, but since then I have acquired a polarizer, ND and ND grad. There is NOTHING you can do in post-processing that gives the same results as using these filters (for their purpose).

I'm thinking of exploring other interesting Cokin filters, like the a diffuser, champagne, difractor, star, split-field... if you have some of these (in A series) at nice prices, I may be interested!

In digital, most color filtering is best done in an image processing app.

Hi Flink

I put the lot on eBay lastnight, I was going to do 2 lots, colour and effects but in the end I decided just to lump them all together.

Hi,

Just to say, If you are after the best image quality then you should do as much as possible at the shooting stage. ANY post production work of any sort degrades the image file to some extent and the more you do, the worse it gets. So, the answer is, use the filters rather then poke about in photoshop.

Cheers Steve.

I sold off some filters on ebay, but I still keep at least a polarizer and an ND in each size. I also think graduated ND is better than a Levels layer and a mask with a graduated density, but if you need to you can imitate a graduated ND in Photoshop.

That works particularly well if you shoot RAW and make two renderings of the file.