A travel, photography & nerd blog

I’m sitting here at a German train, digging trough my unread mails and found one stating that I misunderstood what a polarizing filter is for. Well, I don’t think so And instead of just telling him so, I thought I’d share it here.

I think he was referring to my post about too much polarization. In that post I said, that I always adjusted the angle of the polfilter  to get the strongest effect in the skies. By saying that I of course didn’t mean that you can only use a polfilter to darken the sky in landscape shots. To understand what you can use a polarizing filter for, you need to know that all a polarizing filter does is cutting reflections. The earth’s atmosphere is full of small particles which do all reflect the light of the sun. By cutting these reflections the sky gets darker because there are less reflections which would make the sky look brighter… But I’m still stuck to that polfilter = nicer sky thing.

I for example often use a polfilter when shooting trough windows, because things do reflect in windows and by using the polfilter I can cut these reflections.

Another example is shooting water. If you shoot water without a polfilter chances are good that all you see is the sky or whatever is above that water. But with a polfilter set to the right angle, you might be able to see down to the ground. Depending on the depth of the water of course.

But the reason I usually just keep the polfilter on all the time when shooting landscapes (even if there is not a single piece of sky in the shot) is because IT DOES CUT REFLECTIONS! It cuts reflections from the grass, making it more vibrant. It cuts reflections from leaves, making them more vibrant…

Just two other things you should keep in mind: A polfilter sucks light! Your shutter speed will be about one to two stops slower. Make sure you can hand hold that speed! And the other thing is don’t overdo it or you might get an over-saturated candy look… or as in my case an almost dark sky.

P.S. sorry for the lack of example pictures, but as I said I’m on a train