What is a circular polarizing filter for?

Just curious....

Thanks!

A circular polarizer is a specialty filter that polarizes the light entering the lens. This means that only light waves from one directional plane are allowed to enter the camera. This means that haze from light scatter and reflections off water and other non-metalic objects are reduced or eliminated. In addition, when the lens is pointed toward the northern sky on a clear/partly cloudy day, you'll see that the sky will darken and provide a deeper blue and more "pop" against the clouds. By eliminating scatter and non-metallic reflections, polarizers help to deepen colors and provide a more saturated photo. The one drawback is that since they absorb/block light entering the lens from all but one plane, they reduce the overall light by 1 - 1.5 stops depending on the position of the outer element.

Mark

Ok, thanks!!!! Sounds like something I might want to play with!

Every landscape photogapher should own one, along with a set of graduated Neutral Density filters.

Mark

You can see the effects & learn a little more at this website:

http://www.cs.mtu.edu …ide/filter/pola​rizer.html

Nick

Thanks for the site!!! Would you shoot with it all the time, or just when outdoors?

3kids1036 wrote in post #2044251
Thanks for the site!!! Would you shoot with it all the time, or just when outdoors?

It's not a filter you use all the time. You use it when you need it. Remember, it reduces the light entering your camera. It's certainly not appropriate for shooting indoors or under artificial lights.

Mark

Outdoors while in Yosemite NP mine stayed attached to whatever lens I was using at the moment 90% of the time. Just have to pay attention to the shutter speed as Mark stated it reduces light by around 2 - stops.

Yes it makes no real difference indoors, it can cut refections but the loss of light wouldnt be very good, indoors you need every drop of light you can get

Outdoors is when you use these filters, the effect can be quite good, clouds really stand out & the sky can look very blue indeed, you have to mind though that you dont go overboard with it as it can look a little false.

Overall I would say if you want to do landscapes then get one straight away, you might also want to take a look at the Cokin Graduated filters, I own these & they are brilliant, some of the time I manage to process my raw's to get a decent sky & foreground & merge the 2 exposures, but a graduated filter is highly recommended, it can really hold back the sky & stop it from overexposing, perfect on sunsets.

Nick

Very nice effects with these filters. But, to be totally honest, if you shoot in RAW, with no polarizer, can't you PP any image to get the same effect as using a polarized filter?

After thinking about that for a minute, I guess not. You couldn't make water 'seethrough'.

canonloader wrote in post #2044982
Very nice effects with these filters. But, to be totally honest, if you shoot in RAW, with no polarizer, can't you PP any image to get the same effect as using a polarized filter?

After thinking about that for a minute, I guess not. You couldn't make water 'seethrough'.

Yeah that would be a challenge I had a great shot but forgot to put my polarizer on, I thought I could make the clouds pop out like they do when polarized but you just cant quite get the same effect.