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I just bought a Cokin filter system for my camera, along with 3 eternal density filters (nd2, 4 and I was wondering what other filters would be helpful, especially if I want to take extended shutter photographs in daylight, will the neutral density filters be enough for this? Or do I need a UV filter or polarizing filter.
Professional photographers: What filters do you use most often?
Thanks!

UV filters on a cokin system: Totally forget about them, if you’re using a digital SLR. The point of UV filters on DSLRs is to protect the lens, but for that job they need to be screwed right on the lens, not on a filter holder, They have no beneficial optical effect on a DSLR, as its deep pass filter already filters any UV (and the sensor likely isn’t sensitive towards it anyway).

What you can put to great use is a graduated neutral (not "eternal") grad filter. It does a similar job as a polarizer, but it works regardless of the direction in which the camera is pointed. The degree to which polarizers are effective at darkening the sky depend on the orientation of the camera towards the sun.

I wouldn’t recommend that you get a polarizer for your cokin system though, instead get a circular polarizer that you can screw right on the lens. That’ll be much easier to use than having to set up the whole filter stuff every time you want to use a polarizer (and that’s something you’ll likely want often).

Also, you can easily build a variable effect neutral density filter if you simply get another linear polarizer that you screw in front of your circular one. The second one MUST be a linear one, and it MUST be in front of the circular one for this to work (two linear ones would work as well, but that’d throw off your light metering). You’ll be surprised how cheap linear polarizers are compared to circular ones by the way, i paid just 10€ for a 58mm Hoya one.

Why should one use polarizers as a variable neutral grad instead of the cokin system? First of all, it’s a variable ND that you can set up to the desired effect in no time, and it’s compact to carry around. Also i’ve found that filter in a cokin system tend to degrade the contrast. Just a bit if it’s a single filter, but a lot if one stacks filters. Admittedly my filters weren’t of the best quality though, i got a cheap filter holder copy from hong kong which works just fine (instead of paying extraorbitant prices for a bit of plastic and an adapter ring from the original manufacturer), but i didn’t buy original cokin filters but used the tian ya one that were supplied with it. Just try it out yourself and take a look how using and especially stacking your filters affects the histogram. You should see no relevant change there if they are good and stackable. I definitely did see a massive change with stacked tian ya filters (not so much with a single one). The variable ND filter made from two hoya polarizers however did not change the histogram and thus the contrast in any way, hence i regard it as totally superior in all ease of use, versatility and optical quality.

I do use the filter holder for a single graduated ND filter though, that’s definitely a strength of that system and that’s a filter you should have. Go for the ND4 graduated one.

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