What filter would work best in this situtation (images attached)

[morris_jay]

I'm wondering whether to get a polarizer or Neutral density 2x filter. I only need a circular plarizer if the lens barrel rotates when zooming and focusing don't i?

I want to have the colours slighty darker, and not have the hot, bald skys. And also reduce the glare and reflection on the water.

http://home.exetel.com.au/jez/images/filter.jpg

Cheers

[SkipD]

A polarizing filter will help with the reflections on the water, and might be able to darken the blue of the sky depending on the specific conditions.

A circular polarizer (as opposed to a linear polarizer) is needed for almost any camera with automatic focus. The choice has nothing to do with whether or not the front element of the lens rotates with zooming or focus.

A polarizing filter needs to be rotated to the ideal position for the immediate circumstances to optimize the effect. If focussing the lens rotates the front element, it is a BIG problem. You will probably be messing up focus when you tweak the filter, and you mess up the filter position when you focus. If you want to use a polarizing filter, I strongly suggest getting a better lens that has a non-rotating front element.

[robertwgross]

When you have an irregular horizon with sky like that, I don't think any filter will help much.

You might have to Photoshop it.

---Bob Gross---

[ed2day]

A grad ND filter would help the sky, esp if the subjuect's head was a little lower. But you realize if you try to bring life back to the sky the trees are likely going to become black silouhettes.

[DavidW]

You can't easily do anything about the reflection in post-processing - a circular polariser may well have helped.

You could try the 'contrast mask' trick described here (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-contrast-masking.shtml), which allows you to pull up the shadows and reduce the contrast.

I tried this quickly in Photoshop CS2. To my eye, 5 pixels of Gaussian Blur and 40% opacity for the mask layer looks OK. (Note that CS2 changes the overlay mode and opacity slightly differently to the instructions - select the mask layer, then the overlay mode and opacity are at the top of the layers dialog).

What do you think? (Don't forget you can flatten the image and play with Levels and/or Curves afterwards).



David

[foxbat]

The only way you're ever going to kill the reflections is with a polarizer. You could then do a bracketed exposure and merge the sky from the underexposed bracket with the rest of the image from the normal exposure to get a final image.