Pull_Up said:
Any pros care to recommend a "starter" kit of two or three filter types to start with and their benefits/uses?
EDIT - Just saw the excellent replies above from Gainfulshrimp after I'd finished typing and pressed 'submit' ! but never mind, here's my two centimes anyway:
For any type of photography in the digital era you really need only two types of filter: a polarising filter and, possibly, a neutral density filter. The latter (ND filter) comes in two types, normal and graduated. Graduated ND filters are darker at the top and clear at the bottom (with a graduated transition in between). Ordinary ND filters would be of no use on the P2V as they are designed simply to cut down the amount of light entering the lens (necessary if you want to use slow shutter speeds in bright light on still cameras).
A polarising filter, when correctly aligned in bright sunlight, enhances colour and contrast. In particular, it makes blue skies much bluer and, as a consequence, emphasises clouds. The greens of foliage and grass also become more vibrant and, consequently, outdoor images in sunlight are altogether generally more 'punchy'. A polarising filter is therefore extremely useful for landscape photography (and hence, for P2V images!)
A polarising filter is also useful for removing unwanted reflections from water and glass and from many non-metallic reflective surfaces such as leaves.
The filter is fitted into a mount; you then rotate the filter in the mount whilst looking through the viewfinder until you see the point when the optimum polarising effect is achieved (but on an P2V you'd obviously use your LCD to set this up - but read on because there's a caveat.....
As far as skies are concerned, polarising filters work best when the camera is pointed 90 degrees from the sun. Straight into the sun, or straight away from it, you'll see little, if any, effect. At angles in between you'll see varying degrees of darkening. On very wide angle lenses you can actually see the variance, and this can be a real problem because the phenomena produces an unnatural image with deep blue sky in one part of the image and washed out sky in another, and therefore this is something you need to be careful of when shooting super-wide. In other words, if you're using a polarising filter on a P2V, you'd probably want to go into the app and reduce your angle of view.
A graduated ND filter is handy when you have bright skies which you want to 'darken' without affecting the exposure of the landscape. They need to be carefully aligned to be really useful.
Any other effect (and there were dozens of effects filters in the days of film) you can probably achieve in Photoshop.
DON'T buy a 'protective' filter (skylight, UV) as this will only cause flare in your image/footage
Hope this helps