Ducks

Walczak Photo wrote in post #5968273
I also more than understand the whole "new camera" syndrome...been there myself many times! LOL!!! When I first started taking photography a little more seriously, I too shot many pictures of "junk" sitting on my coffee table trying to figure out how to control stuff like DOF, etc.. In fact, just about a month ago when I got my new 40D, I shot a bunch of pictures of my kitchen...nothing specifically in the kitchen per say (soup cans, my deep fryer, etc)...trying to see just how much more I could get out of the higher ISO's over my Rebel XT. It's all part of the learning process.

:oThen I guess I might be 'normal'!! I take pics in the car since my boyfriend is always the one driving, I get bored. He gets a little annoyed with all the profile shots, but I promised to never post a pic of him without permission.

Glad you said this, now I can tell him it's normal novice photography behavior!

pprice wrote in post #5962851
I just bought a circular polarizer today and I am going to wait for the sun to drop a little more and take my car to the lake to try again (with a better background).

I do have another question about this filter though, how do you know when it is needed and when it will hurt more than help? Is there a rule of thumb or does it just come from experience?

I don't think that this one has been addressed yet, so I will. If you are shooting roughly in the direction of the sun or away from it, the CPF will not be of any use other than making the image darker which is not something that you would normally want to do. The best direction to shoot is perpendicular to the azimuth angle of the sun (if the sun is around 270° then shoot approximately towards 0° or 180° ). The best time to use it is either early to mid morning or late afternoon until the sun is low. Also, you will need to rotate the filter while looking through the viewfinder to get the effect that you want. I do not think that the CPF's have as much impact on an image as the old ordinary plain vanilla polarizing filters.

Just in case anyone is interested, the only difference between the two types is that the CPF is followed by a quarter-wave plate that is set for about the midpoint of the human range of vision. That is its shortcoming -- it only works as a true circular polarizer at that one point and then becomes increasingly eliptical as the light goes towards either blue or red. At either end of our vision range, the filter is function more like a linear polarizer than a circular polarizer. The only reason that CPF's ae even used is that the focus system on some, maybe most, digital cameras does not work reliably with ordinary polarizers. I have an old plain polarizer so I need to try it out on my camera to see if it is an issue.

Want to see a cool effect with circular polarizers? Stand in front of a mirror and hold the CPF in front of one of your eyes so that the side that screws into the lens is towards your eye ... you can see your eye in the mirror. Now, flip the filter around and do the same thing ... suddenly the filter just looks black.

A salesman at a camera store was trying to explain to a customer how a CPF works -- he said that the polarizer was like concentric rings sort of like a phonograph record so that the polarized light was polarized in all directions ... duh.

Great info Mr. Bill!

By the way, all my threads kind of go all over the place right now (in reference to walczaks last post) because I have so many different questions, and I like to joke around .

I am fixing to go back out of the country (without my camera ) for two weeks, so I will be back to just reading and learning without being able to take a picture.

pennypue wrote in post #5968617
:oThen I guess I might be 'normal'!! I take pics in the car since my boyfriend is always the one driving, I get bored. He gets a little annoyed with all the profile shots, but I promised to never post a pic of him without permission.

Glad you said this, now I can tell him it's normal novice photography behavior!

Hey...at least he LETS YOU take pictures of him! You have no idea what I have to go through before my wife will let me even take a picture of her, let alone post it some where! LOL!!! A while back I got some new studio strobes and I wanted to "test them out" before taking them out on a shoot. Before my wife would pose for me, I had to clean the kitchen and the bathroom and scrub all the floors!!! OYE!

Irreverent wrote in post #5964675
I might be slow, but is this whole thread one huge subtle car brag?

Walczak Photo wrote in post #5969815
Hey...at least he LETS YOU take pictures of him! You have no idea what I have to go through before my wife will let me even take a picture of her, let alone post it some where! LOL!!! A while back I got some new studio strobes and I wanted to "test them out" before taking them out on a shoot. Before my wife would pose for me, I had to clean the kitchen and the bathroom and scrub all the floors!!! OYE!

Damn, your wife is smart!!

She probably LOVES to have her picture taken....she's just smart. VERY smart!

BTW, if you do not see a reflection of your eye in either of the two circular polarizing filter tests that I mentioned, it means that you are a vampire.

pprice wrote in post #5969028
I am fixing to go back out of the country (without my camera ) for two weeks, so I will be back to just reading and learning without being able to take a picture.

Isn't this illegal?

Keep asking your questions. I'm learning tons while you are too!

Oh WOW! Now THIS is what forums are for!!!!!

Paul, you are the man!!!!