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The Best Photo Accessory?
In a recent survey of advanced amateur and professional photographers, a significant number voted their polarising filter as their most valuable accessory.Not just most valuable filter, but most valuable accessory. They put it ahead of tripods, flash guns, reflectors, accessory lenses...everything! Digital post-processing can duplicate the effect of most filters; but even those that claim to provide a polarising effect do not close close to the real thing. If you needed it when you framed the picture, no amount Photoshopping is going to fix the image. Of all the filters available, a polarising filter is the first one you should buy - and it will probably cost you less than the inadequate electronic plug-in substitute! What can it do? First of all it can darken the sky, turning them a deep, rich blue and emphasising clouds, without inducing a false colour caste to either.. Polarising filters can remove reflections in water: remember those Polaroid sunglasses adds that let the fisherman see the fish under the surface?.If you're shooting a river scene and you want to see detail in the water or on the river bottom, you need a polariser; if you are trying to capture the swirl of carp milling for food, or that trout about to strike a fly, or a shy platypus this is the filter you need. You can’t add that detail in PaintShopPro. Take one into the rainforest or the bush, and you will finally be able to capture the true richness and diversity of the greens in the foliage, as the polariser cuts back the reflection and glare, making leaves and such less . Colour saturation is enhanced with almost any subject. No other filter can provide this. All this is possible because light is transmitted in wave form. These waves travel in all directions at different rates and sizes, and polarising filters limit which waves enter the camera's lens at any one time allowing only those that are parallel to the polariser’s own axis. The rates, or frequencies, determine the colour of light, the size of the wave and it's intensity. Think of it as a set of slats that lets object through if they are parallel with the slats but stops other objects getting through. Both lenses in the filter have these “slats” so rotating the filter lines up the gaps at different angles allowing more of less ranges of light waves to get through. In more detail, this is what you can achieve:
Skies
By reducing the reflected and refracted light from water vapour and droplets in the atmosphere the polariser brings greater saturation and contrast to your photos. Water and reflective surfaces
By eliminating reflections on non-metalic surfaces , the polarising filter makes water and other reflective surfaces more transparent. The effect will also vary depending on the angle to the reflective surface. Low angles limit the effect while shooting from, say a bridge above a lake, will render the water quite transparent. Color Enhancement
By polarising the light reflecting from surfaces such as foliage the filter intensifies their colours. Light absorption
Only light which is aligned with the plane of the polariser passes through to your film or sensor. Up to 1.5 stop of light. are reflected away or absorbed. This allows the polariser to act as a neutral density filter, increasing the exposure required for an accurate record. This requires you to either shoot at a lower speed or larger aperture. Whether this is an advantage (makes lovely water flows and motion blur possible) or a disadvantage (not enough depth of field) depends on what you are photographing and what you are trying to achieve. In any case, low light situations may require some type of camera support, such as a tripod. A polarising filter consists of two lenses fitted together in such a way that they can be rotated relative to each other The effects they achieve will vary according to the degree of rotation and the angle at which the light falls on the subject. Polarization is most effective at between 60 and 90 degrees to the sun. That means that the subject that you are shooting will display maximum polarisation when the sun falls on the subject from the side.With the sun right behind you, or behind the subject, you will see no effect at all. Point at the light source with your thumb extended. Anything you can point your thumb towards will be affected by the filter’s effect. Because the polarisation is uneven across the sky, very wide angle lenses (24 degrees or more on a 35mm camera) will take in areas that are polarised differently and some areas will therefore look unnaturally darker than others. Whether this is a good thing or not is a matter of taste, as is over-polarisation, which can turn the sky almost black especially at high altitudes. Polarisers quite thick in compared to other which can cause vignetting on some camera/lens combinations. This appears as darkening in the corners of the photo. One of the disadvantages of lenses that rotate as they zoom or focus is that you have to continuously reset polariser. With non-rotating systems, you can rotate the filter at any time and the effect will stay the same if you need to refocus. Switching to manual focus can make it easier to keep the filter in the same position. There are two types of polarising filter: Linear and Circular. The linear filters are only useful on manual focus lenses. On most cameras, they interfere with the autofocus system. Avoid them. |
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This intel was contributed by David Rich
David Rich
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May, 2012
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